Tohir Malik

Tohir Malik is a pen name; the writer was born Tohir Abdumalikovich Hobilov. He was born in Tashkent on 27 December 1946, the youngest of five children, and grew up in the hard years after the war. Before he started school he had already learned to read and write by sitting beside his older brothers and sisters while they did their homework. His maternal uncle, the writer and translator Mirzakalon Ismoiliy, was arrested in 1949 as an “enemy of the people” and later cleared. Two pieces of his uncle’s advice — not to write about what you do not know well, and to find your own road — stayed with Tohir Malik for life. His first story appeared in 1960 in the children’s magazine “Gulxan”.

In 1963 he enrolled in the evening journalism course of Tashkent State University (now the National University of Uzbekistan) while working by day as a carpenter and bricklayer on building sites, and graduated in 1969. In 1965–1966 he taught at a school. From 1966 his working life was spent in newspapers and publishing: he headed a department of the children’s newspaper “Lenin uchquni” (now “Tong yulduzi”), was an editor at Uzbek Radio, and worked as an editor at the magazine “Guliston” in 1975–1978 and at the Ghafur Ghulam publishing house in 1981–1982.

From 1982 to 1985 he was executive secretary of the literary monthly “Sharq yulduzi”, and from 1985 to 1987 editor-in-chief of the Cho'lpon publishing house. He served as a secretary of the Writers’ Union of Uzbekistan in 1988–1990 and edited the magazine “Yoshlik” in 1989–1991. In the first years of independence he was executive secretary of the State Prizes Committee, helping to reward writers and artists, and later an editor in the main editorial office of the Sharq publishing and printing company. Until the end of his life he taught the Uzbek language and the foundations of spirituality to cadets at the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs as a senior lecturer.

Having learned his craft in stories for children, Tohir Malik turned to science fiction, a genre Uzbek prose had barely touched. “The Death of Hikmat Afandi”, written while he was a student and published in 1972, is regarded as the first science-fiction novella in Uzbek literature. It was followed by the science-fiction novellas “Poisonous Dust” (1974), “Falak” (1975) and “Envoys of the Milky Way” (1978), by “People at the Crossroads” (1982), which blends fantasy with a detective plot, and by the adventure novella “One Street, One Night” (1983). In “The Swallow” (1987) he traced the making of the Uzbek intelligentsia of the 1920s through the fate of Abdulla Avloniy, while “Farewell, Childhood” (1989) is about teenagers who drift into crime. “The Last Bullet” (1990) was adapted as a seven-part television film in 1994.

His best-known work is “Shaytanat”, a five-book novel about the criminal underworld. He began it in 1984; the first book came out in 1992 in “Sharq yulduzi” at the initiative of its editor-in-chief, O'tkir Hoshimov, the next ones in 1995, 1997 and 2000, and the fifth in 2011. Against the background of gang life the novel studies the inner world of its characters and warns readers away from that world, a theme the author pursued further in the analytical essay “The Long Road of Crime” (2004). The novel was made into a 20-episode television series.

Tohir Malik wrote about ten radio plays and scripts for documentary films, among them “The Literature of Amir Temur’s Age” (1998), “Varakhsha” (1999), “Sea Without Shores” (2000) and “Moshtabib” (2002). His literary essays deal with the work of his uncle Mirzakalon Ismoiliy (“A Writer’s Fortune and Misfortune”, 1988), the novels of Abdulla Qodiriy (“A School of Example”, 1993) and O'lmas Umarbekov (“A Debt until Judgement Day”, 2002). His memoirs and literary articles were collected in “Guest Feelings” (2003). He translated into Uzbek a novella by Dostoevsky, published as “Ma'suma”, and other works of world literature.

In 2000 he received the honorary title of People’s Writer of Uzbekistan. He was awarded the orders “Do'stlik” and “Mehnat shuhrati”, received the “Maorif fidoyisi” badge for his books on the upbringing of young people, and some of his books won annual prizes decided by readers’ polls, including the Ghafur Ghulam Prize. Tohir Malik died in Tashkent on 16 May 2019, aged 72, after a serious illness, and was buried in the Shaykh Zayniddin cemetery. Recollections of him by friends, colleagues and pupils were gathered in the book “Tohir Malik in the Memory of His Contemporaries”.