Veteran poet, writer Chulananda Samaranayake is to launch his new translation today. He is to publish Sinhala translation of the novel 'Dead Lake' by Uzbek writer Hamid Ismailov as 'Miyadunu Vila'. Ismailov is to participate the book launch today (September 25) at 3.00 pm at the Russian Cultural Center in Independence Street, Colombo. “The Dead Lake” is a haunting Russian tale about the environmental legacy of the Cold War.

Hamid Ismailov is an Uzbek journalist and writer who was forced to flee Uzbekistan in 1992 and came to the United Kingdom, where he took a job as a writer in residence with the BBC World Service. Ismailov's works are banned in Uzbekistan.

Ismailov has published dozens of books in Uzbek, Russian, French, German, Turkish and other languages. Among them books of poetry:Garden(1987), Desert (1988); of visual poetry: "Post Faustum" (1990), novels: Le vagabond flamboyant (1993), Hay-ibn-Yakzan (2001), Hostage to Celestial Turks (2003), The road to death is bigger than death (2005) and many others.