Khayriddin Sultanov

Khayriddin Sultanov was born on 19 January 1956 in the village of Tuzel in the Qibray District of Tashkent Region. He finished secondary school in Parkent in 1973 and entered the Faculty of Journalism of Tashkent State University (now the National University of Uzbekistan), graduating in 1978. He began writing early: his first story, “The Old Man” (“Chol”), appeared in the newspaper Toshkent oqshomi in the 1970s.

While still a student he joined the magazine Guliston as a literary staff member and later headed a section there (1974–1980); it was there that he learned the craft of fiction from the writer Asqad Mukhtar. In 1980–1982 he was an editor at the Ghafur Ghulam Publishing House of Literature and Art, in 1982–1985 a section editor and executive secretary of the magazine Yoshlik, and in 1985–1993 he returned to the publishing house as deputy editor-in-chief and then editor-in-chief.

His first book, the short-story collection “The Sun Shines on All”, came out in 1980, followed by the collections of stories and novellas “An Evening's Tale” (1983), “My Mother's Land” (1987) and “And Life Goes On” (1988). As a translator he rendered into Uzbek works by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Yuri Nagibin, Vasily Shukshin and Valentin Rasputin.

The figure of Zahir ud-Din Muhammad Babur runs through his prose: “Babur's Dreams” (1992), “Boburiynoma” (1997), which the author called an enlightenment novel, and the novella “The Shore of Happiness” (2005) are devoted to him. Sultanov has also written journalism about Babur and essays on Abdulla Qodiriy and his novels. His screenplays were filmed as the video films “The Gallows”, “A Page from the Past” and “The Scorpion from the Altar” and as the films “I Weep When I See You in My Dreams” and “My Only Keepsake”; he is also the author of the play “On the Banks of the Sarhovuz” (1992).

He entered government service in 1993. In the Office of the President of Uzbekistan he was a leading and chief consultant of the President's press service and head of the information and editorial service, then State Adviser to the President for public relations and later for the media, culture, the arts and creative organisations. In 1999 he was elected a deputy of the Oliy Majlis of the second convocation. After the Office of the President was turned into the Presidential Administration in August 2018 and the posts of state advisers were abolished, he has served as Adviser and speechwriter to the President.

His later books include “Want and Plenty”, “Three Hundred and Sixty-Four Days” (2019) and “The Heart Is Free” (2019); separate editions of his work have appeared in Russian, Turkish, Azerbaijani and Kyrgyz. The historical novel “The Night of Yalda” (2025) is a literary mystification: presented as a rediscovered manuscript by Abdulla Qodiriy, it follows the descendants of Otabek, the hero of “Days Gone By”, through Tsarist colonial rule, the Jadid movement and the Soviet era.

Sultanov received the Shuhrat Medal (1996), the Order of Labour Glory (2003) and the Order “For Selfless Service” (2016), and the title of Honoured Journalist of Uzbekistan in 2006. On 19 January 2026, his 70th birthday, a presidential decree conferred on him the honorary title of People's Writer of Uzbekistan.