About the novel “Kecha va kunduz”

Although Cho‘lpon was famous as a poet, he wrote stories such as “Qurvoni jaholat,” “Qor qo‘ynida lola,” “Novvoy qiz” and “Oydin kechalarda,” and in the 1930s he worked on the two-part novel “Kecha va kunduz.” The first part came out as a separate book in 1936, the fate of the second part remained unknown; after the repression the novel was banned from reading for many years and returned to readers after half a century. The novel deals with the environment of Turkestan in the early 20th century, the corrosion of tsarist colonialism from within, the baseness of local officials, and questions such as self-awareness, enlightenment and freedom; there are characters such as Akbarali mingboshi and Miryoqub epaqa, and Zebi’s fate shakes the reader. The style is lyrical: the epigraph, the spring description, the symbols of moon and star, and the precise details in the portrait of Razzoq so‘fi (his taciturnity, his speech, calling his wife “Fitna”) reveal the character.