Nazarmat Egamnazarov

Nazarmat (full name Nazarmat Egamnazarov) was born on 7 November 1917 in the village of Nov in the Khujand region, in present-day Tajikistan. His elder brother, the poet Ashurmat Nazarov (1913–1964), strongly influenced his turn to poetry. His first poem, “Qo‘zichoq” (“The Lamb”), appeared in print in 1934.

After finishing secondary school in 1935 he entered Samarkand State University, graduating in 1941. His first poetry collection, “Yoshlik zavqi” (“The Joy of Youth”), came out the same year, but he went straight to the war: in the Second World War he served as a platoon commander. From 1944 to 1947 he worked on the front-line newspaper “Front haqiqati”.

On returning from the army he worked from 1947 to 1954 as a literary staff member and department head at “Qizil O‘zbekiston” (today “O‘zbekiston ovozi”), and then, until 1985, headed the literature and arts department of “Toshkent haqiqati”. Because of the war his second collection, “Vatan ishqi” (“Love of the Homeland”), was published only in 1949.

In the following decades came the poetry collections “Yashil dalalar” (1955), “Sir bo‘yi — nur bo‘yi” (1959), “Tog‘dagi gulxanlar” (1962), “Nay sadosi” (1965), “Bahor qo‘shig‘i” (1968) and “Mangu olov” (1972), and the children’s books “Shahrimiz bolalari” (1970) and “G‘unchalar” (1987). Many of his poems became songs. In all, more than twenty books of verse and prose were published.

The war remained one of his main themes: the narrative poem “Yurakdagi o‘q”, the novellas “Olovli tong” and “Sayyod jasorati”, and the collections of stories and sketches “Qirg‘oqdagi jang”, “Burch yo‘li” and “Turnalar yo‘li” are devoted to life at the front. As a translator he rendered Ferdowsi, Amir Khusrau Dehlavi, Jami, Nasir Khusraw, Bedil, Mirzo Tursunzoda and Mirshakar into Uzbek.

In 1967 he was given the title Honoured Worker of Culture of the Uzbek SSR, and on the seventh anniversary of independence he received the Order “El-yurt hurmati”. In 1997 his selected works, “Gul va gulxan”, and a book of memoir sketches, “Ona ko‘rsatgan yo‘l”, were published; in 2002 writers’ articles on his work were gathered in the volume “Dilnoma”. Nazarmat died in 2009.