Sa'dulla Karomatov

Sa'dulla Muzaffarovich Karomatov was born on 14 July 1928 in Bukhara and received his secondary education there. He studied in the philology faculty of the Central Asian State University in Tashkent and graduated in 1949.

He began his career at the Uzbek radio broadcasting committee (1949–1951). From 1954 he worked in the press: as a literary staff member and head of a department at the newspaper Sovet O'zbekistoni (Soviet Uzbekistan), then as executive secretary of O'zbekiston madaniyati (1957–1959) and again of Sovet O'zbekistoni (1959–1966). From 1966 to 1982 he was editor-in-chief of the newspapers Toshkent oqshomi and Vecherny Tashkent.

In the 1960s he became known as an essayist. His first major prose work, the documentary novella “Smile of the Mountains”, appeared in 1963; collections of essays followed: “Golden Curls of the Amu”, “Silver Belt” and “Symbol of Beauty”. He then wrote novellas and stories, among them “A Drop of Blood” (1968), about the tragedy of a love, and “Conviction” (1970), about the hardships of life after the war. In his last years he wrote the novels “Golden Sand”, about the lives of geologists, and “The Last Barkhan”, about people reclaiming the deserts.

Karomatov also worked as a translator. Into Uzbek he put a sea-adventure novel by Jules Verne, the novel “The Black Caravan” by the Turkmen writer Kilich Kuliev, the novella “When the Mill Stopped” by the Tajik writer Yusuf Akobirov, Vadim Kozhevnikov's novel “Peshin chogi kungay tomonda” and a collection of stories by Iranian writers.

In 1982–1985 he was a secretary of the Writers' Union of Uzbekistan. In 1978 he was given the title Honoured Worker of Culture of the Uzbek SSR. Sa'dulla Karomatov died in Tashkent on 21 August 1987.