Umarali Normatov

Umarali Normatov was born on 3 January 1931 in the village of Rapqon in the Beshariq district of the Fergana region. He studied at the philology faculty of Central Asian State University (today the National University of Uzbekistan) in 1952–1957, took postgraduate studies there in 1959–1962 and defended his candidate’s dissertation in 1962. In 1978 he defended his doctoral dissertation and became a doctor of philology.

His literary-critical articles have been published since 1957. His whole academic and teaching career was tied to a single university, where he worked as a senior lecturer, docent and professor, and from 1974 to 2000 headed the department of Uzbek philology. He is regarded as a follower of the school of literary criticism founded by Ozod Sharafiddinov.

Normatov’s research concentrated on modern Uzbek literature, above all prose and questions of realism. His books include “Nasrimiz ufqlari” (“Horizons of Our Prose”, 1974), “Yetuklik” (“Maturity”, 1982), “Qalb inqilobi” (“Revolution of the Heart”, 1986), “Qodiriy bog‘i” (“Qodiriy’s Garden”, 1996), on the work of Abdulla Qodiriy, and “Umidbaxsh tamoyillar” (“Promising Trends”, 2000); he devoted the book “Qahhorni anglash mashaqqati” (“The Difficulty of Understanding Qahhor”) to Abdulla Qahhor. In all he published more than 500 articles and about twenty books, and his work appeared in Russian, Tajik and Turkish.

In 1981 he was named Honoured Science Worker of the Uzbek SSR, and in 1989 he won the Hamza State Prize of the Uzbek SSR. He received the badge “Excellence in Public Education” in 1992 and the title “Skilled Teacher” of Tashkent State University in 1998; he was also awarded the Order “El-yurt hurmati”.

Umarali Normatov died in Tashkent on 29 January 2022, aged 91.