Turgun Polat

Turgun Polat was born on 20 November 1928 in the village of Mashad in the Uychi district of the Namangan region. His childhood fell in the war years, and he was able to study only up to the ninth grade.

Like his father, he began working as a bookkeeper in his home village, and later worked at the regional agricultural bank. In those years he contributed to the regional newspaper “Namangan haqiqati”, which printed his first poems, articles and satirical pieces. In the mid-1950s he moved to Tashkent.

In the capital he worked as a literary staff member, department head, editor and translator at the newspaper Qizil O‘zbekiston (today O‘zbekiston ovozi), at the Uzbekfilm studio and at the Uzbek Telegraph Agency, and headed a department at the magazine Sharq yulduzi. From 1951 he appeared in the press with essays, stories and feuilletons, and he translated into Uzbek works by Vladimir Ovechkin, Pyotr Brovka, Alexander Pokryshkin and Alexander Saburov. He joined the Journalists’ Union of Uzbekistan in 1958 and the Writers’ Union in 1971.

He came to literature through poetry, with the books “Our Grandfather” (1951), “The Great Trade” (1952), “You Are My Eternal Companion” (1956) and “Festival Song” (1959). He then became known for prose, above all satirical stories: “The Women’s Revolt” (1967), “Jig‘ildon qori” (1970), the cycle of stories about Haji the bookkeeper and the collection built on it, “A Guest from Mars” (1973). His essays and journalism include “On Hallowed Ground” (1970), “Walking Through the Valleys” (1971) and “The Philanderer” (1972).

His best-known work is the novella “Ichkuyov” (“The Live-in Son-in-Law”), written in 1975. A four-part television film was made from it, and together with the film’s makers the writer was posthumously awarded the Hamza State Prize of the Uzbek SSR (sources give 1979 and 1986; the list of laureates gives 1986).

Turgun Polat died suddenly on 27 April 1974, at the height of his creative powers. His book “Yalovbardor” was published posthumously in 1986. He left five sons and four daughters.