From colonial past to post-colonial future: Three Uzbek novels (Qodiriy, Oybek, Hoshimov)

The creation of identity has always been one of the essential arguments in post-colonial criticism. In this case, literary works can provide us with a map by means of which this identity process is argued, questioned and represented. In this study, I will focus on three literary works in which the writers have offered different proposals for new identities for their nation. Additionally, the same writers deal with history as the indispensable part of their proposals: while two of them criticize this history very harshly for being the essential tool to oppress the people, another bases his proposals on the history which he believes to be the one of the real sources to create a national identity.; One of the significant features of this process is the tension between the colonizer and the colonized. The texts that I will work on reflect how these two are reflecting each other in the process of creating identities. Moreover, through these texts my study will explore how a nation has been colonized, and how the colonizer has been evaluated and criticized by the writers, historians and post-colonial critics.; Finally, I will try to follow the route that Uzbek literary history had followed in different periods, and the different ideological influential shifts that Uzbek literature has experienced, because this route and these shifts explicitly show the main turning points in creating new identities.