Chyngyz Torokulovich Aitmatov 1928y-2008y

Chingiz Aitmatov-is a Kyrgyz writer and contemporary Soviet

literature, an influential writer was born December 12, 1928,
the village of Seker, (now Kara-Buura, Talas region) of the
Kyrgyz Republic. His works with a distinctive national style and
a strong lyrical color, writing in Kyrgyz and Russian languages.
People's Writer of the Kirghiz SSR (1974). Hero of Socialist
Labor (1978). Laureth Lenin (1963) and three State Prizes (1968,
1977, 1983). A member of the Communist Party since 1959.
Member of Editorial Board, "Library of World Literature." So
far, his work has been translated into many languages around
the world.
His family was bilingual, Russian-Kyrgyz. His father, Torekul
Aitmatov, was one of the first Kyrgyz communists and a
regional party secretary. In 1937, while attending the Institute
for Red Professorship in Moscow, Torekul was arrested and
executed on charges of anti-Soviet bourgeois nationalism.
Young Aitmatov was brought up by a single mother. He
attended the Russian school, then Kyrgyz Agricultural Institute
in Frunze, but changed from the study of livestock to the study
of literature at the Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow.
He made his literary debut in Russia, in 1952, with publication
of his stories in Russian. From 1958 to 1966 he was roving
correspondent for the leading Soviet Newspaper Pravda. In
1967 he became a member of the Executive Board of the Soviet
Writers Union, and in 1968 he won the Soviet State Prize for
literature for his novel Farewell, Gulsary!, a tale of an old man
reminiscing about the parallel lives of himself and his old horse,
which is dying. Aitmatov won two more State Prizes in 1977
and 1983, and was named a Hero of Socialist Labor in 1978.
From 1964 to 1985 he was Chairman of the Cinema Union of
Kyrgyzian SSR, and in 1985 he was named Chairman of the
Kyrgyz Writers Union. In 1990-1991 he served as an advisor to
Mikhail Gorbachev and in 1990 was appointed Soviet
Ambassabor to Luxemburg. He served as the Soviet and then
Russian ambassador to Belgium from 1990 to 1993. In 1995, he
became Kyrgyzstan's ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and
the Netherlands and also represented his home country in the
European Union, NATO and UNESCO. During the 1990s, Chingiz
Aitmatov was member of the Kyrgyzstan's parliament.
His representative works : 'Jamila' (1958), 'The First Teacher'
(1967), 'Farewell, Gyulsary!' (1967), 'The White Ship' (1972),
and 'The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years' (1988) were
translated in more than 20 languages across the world. After
the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Aitmatov's novels
found a new audience in the West and gained popularity in
Germany. He died of pneumonia and kidney failure on June 10,
2008, in Nuremberg, Germany, and was laid to rest in
Kyrgyzstan.
Chyngyz Torokulovich
Aitmatov
1928y-2008y