Ozod Sharafiddinov

Ozod Sharafiddinov was born on 1 March 1929 in the village of Oxunqaynar near Kokand. He finished School No. 14 in Tashkent in 1946 and entered the philology faculty of Central Asian State University (today the National University of Uzbekistan), graduating in 1951.

He then did postgraduate work at the Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow (1951–1954) and in April 1955 defended a candidate's dissertation on post-war Uzbek poetry. From 1954 until about 1994 he taught at the university in Tashkent, first as a docent and later as a professor.

Sharafiddinov became known as a literary critic in the 1960s. His first major book, “Time. Soul. Poetry”, appeared in 1962, followed by “Literary Sketches” (1968), “Standard-Bearers” (1974), “Facets of Talent” (1976), “The First Miracle” (1979) and “Abdulla Qahhor” (1988). They include literary portraits of Oybek, Ghafur Ghulam, Abdulla Qahhor, Shaykhzoda, Mirtemir and Zulfiya. In 1970 he received the Beruni State Prize.

After independence one of his main subjects was the legacy of Cholpon: the books “Cholpon” (1991) and “Understanding Cholpon” (1994), as well as “Why I Changed My Beliefs” (1997), “Pages from a Notebook” (1999), “The President” (2003) and “The Joy of Understanding Creativity” (2004). He also translated into Uzbek Leo Tolstoy's “A Confession”, Paulo Coelho's “The Alchemist” and Françoise Sagan's “A Little Sun in Cold Water”.

In 1995–1997 he was deputy editor-in-chief of the journal Tafakkur, and from 1997 until his death he edited the journal Jahon adabiyoti (World Literature). He received the Order of Mehnat Shuhrati in 1997 and the Order “For Outstanding Merit” in 1999; on 23 August 2002 he was given the title Hero of Uzbekistan.

Ozod Sharafiddinov died on 4 October 2005 and was buried at the Chigatai cemetery in Tashkent.