Odil Yakubov

Who is Odil Yakubov?

Odil Yakubov is an Uzbek writer who died in December 2009 at the age of 83.

He wrote dozens of novels and was celebrated as writer, both in the Soviet era as in the first decade of the independence of Uzbekistan since 1991. He served as chairman of the Uzbek Writers Union from 1987 to 1992. Also he was editor in chief of the newspaper "Uzbekistan Literature and Art," and heading the Uzbek state film studio.

He was vice president of the Assembly of Culture of Central Asia and even served in the Soviet Congress of Peoples Deputies while Mikhail Gorbachev was president.

His writing reflected care for people's demands of officials and a skeptic attitude towards the state.

Yakubov raised important political issues, such as cotton monoculture and Uzbek soldiers dying during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, during sessions of the Congress of People's Deputies.

Among Yakubov's most famous publications in the Uzbek language are the short stories titled "Peers," "Two Loves," "Muqaddas," "Bird Wings," and novels "It's Not Easy To Become A Man," "Treasures of Ulugbek," "Conscience," "White-White Swans," and "Justice."

He was a close friend of the Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov, who died in June 2008.