Qamchibek Kenja

Qamchibek Kenja (born Qamchibek Kenjaboyev) was born on 15 August 1946 into a farming family in the village of Gurkurov, Izboskan District, Andijan Region. He started work young: in 1964 he joined the district newspaper as a literary staff member and in the same year enrolled in the correspondence journalism course of Tashkent State University (now the National University of Uzbekistan). A year later he moved to the full-time programme of the philology faculty, graduating in 1969.

From 1969 to 1979 he worked for the national newspaper O'zbekiston madaniyati (now O'zbekiston adabiyoti va san'ati). In 1979 he returned to his home district, where he worked for the district newspaper Paxtakor and taught at school; from 1980 he represented the Writers' Union of Uzbekistan's bureau for the promotion of fiction in Andijan Region. In 1983 he was called to Tashkent as a literary consultant to the Union's prose council, and from 1985 to 2006 he headed the Union's Andijan regional branch as its executive secretary. From 1996 to 2015 he was also editor-in-chief of the social and educational newspaper Xolis. He joined the Union of Journalists in 1974 and the Writers' Union in 1978.

His first book of poems, “Longing”, appeared in 1975, and his first collection of short stories, “The Green Leaf”, in 1977. Later books of verse and prose included “Streets of the Heart” (1979), “If You Fall in Love” (1981), “Dreamers” (1982), “An Unfamiliar Flower” (1986), “An Evening on a Mountain Road” (1987), “The Mermaid by the Shore” (1993), “Red Flowers” (1995) and “The Secret of a Beautiful Woman” (1996), followed by two volumes of selected works (2006–2007), the novella “The Flood” (2010), the novel “The Sling” (2011) and the biographical novella “Courage” (2012). In all, more than thirty of his books were published.

From 1993 Kenja sat on the board of the Babur International Public Foundation, and with its expeditions he travelled to places connected with the Timurids and the Baburids in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other countries. These journeys produced his travel books “Towards India”, “From Andijan to Dhaka”, “In the Footsteps of the Great”, “From Andijan to Baghdad” and “On the Roads of the Great Sahibqiran”, as well as “One of the Baburids” (2000), a book about the expedition's leader Zokirjon Mashrabov that was later reissued twice.

He was an active translator, bringing into Uzbek poems by Pushkin, Heine, Petőfi, Bryusov, Svetlov and Rasul Gamzatov as well as prose and poetry by writers from Asia and Africa. His own poems and stories were translated into Russian, English, Turkish, Ukrainian, Kazakh, Karakalpak, Kyrgyz and Uyghur. Many young writers of Andijan Region regarded him as their mentor.

He was awarded the Shuhrat Medal (1998) and the honorary titles Honoured Worker of Culture of Uzbekistan and Honoured Mentor of Youth of Uzbekistan (2023). He received the International Babur Prize (2004) and in 2014 was made an honorary professor of Andijan State University named after Zahiriddin Muhammad Babur. Qamchibek Kenja died on 8 April 2026.