Normurod Norqobilov

Normurod Norqobilov was born on 7 June 1953 in the village of Qishliq in Yakkabog District of the Qashqadaryo Region. He finished the Hamid Olimjon secondary school in 1970 and served in the army in 1971–1973. Back home, and wishing to know life at first hand, he worked as a fitter at plants and factories, as a wagon repairer at railway depots and as a loader at stations, observing the characters and views of people in many trades.

In 1976–1982 he studied at the journalism faculty of Tashkent State University (now the National University of Uzbekistan). His first short story, “Crossroads”, dates from 1982. He worked for the newspaper “Toshkent oqshomi” in 1982–1983 and for Uzbek Television from 1983 to 2016. Preparing expedition programmes such as “Temur’s Cave”, “Between Two Rivers” and “Traces of Civilization”, he travelled on foot across many of the country’s mountains, hills and steppes and studied its plant and animal life.

What he saw on these journeys became the basis of his novellas about nature and animals: “The Dog of the Thicket”, “Whiteneck”, “The Mountain Man”, “Shaggy” and “The Wolf That Came to the Village”. Through the fates of animals they tell of the bond between people and nature.

His first book, the story collection “The Blue Lake”, appeared in 1987. It was followed by the collections of novellas and stories “The Forgotten Song” (1990), “Face to Face” (1993), “The Yellow Flower”, “Shaggy” (1997), “The Sulky Sparrow” (1999), “The Little White House at the Bus Stop” (2000), “The Rushing River”, “The Wolf That Came to the Village” (2005) and “The Day the Storm Broke” (2007), the novel “Across Steppes and Fields” (2009), and the books “The Lonely Man in the Mountains” (2011) and “In the Footsteps of Amir Temur” (2016).

His works have been translated into Russian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkish, Tatar, English and Arabic, and his stories for children are included in school textbooks in Uzbek, Karakalpak, Kazakh and Kyrgyz. Multi-part video films have been made from his works “The Land Where the Sun Never Sets”, “Trousers, or the Wives’ Quarrel” and “The Sash”.

He received the «Shuhrat» Medal in 1999 and the title of Honoured Worker of Culture of Uzbekistan in 2006. A member of the Writers’ Union of Uzbekistan, he was awarded the Order of Labor Glory («Mehnat shuhrati») in 2026.