Chingiz Aytmatov

Chingiz Aytmatov (born December 12, 1928, Sheker, Kirgiziya, U.S.S.R. [now in Kyrgyzstan]—died June 10, 2008, Nürnberg, Germany) was an author, translator, journalist, and diplomat, best known as a major figure in Kyrgyz and Russian literature.

Aytmatov’s father was a Communist Party official executed during the great purges directed by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in the late 1930s. Aytmatov’s literary career started in 1952, and in 1959 he began writing for Pravda as the newspaper’s correspondent in Kirgiziya. He achieved major recognition with the collection of short stories Povesti gor i stepey (1963; Tales of the Mountains and Steppes), for which he was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1963. Although Aytmatov composed in both Russian and Kyrgyz, many of his works, which are predominantly long short stories and novellas, were originally written in the latter language. Major themes in these works are love and friendship, the trials and heroism of wartime, and the emancipation of Kyrgyz youth from restrictive custom and tradition.

Among Aytmatov’s most important works are Trudnaya pereprava (1956; “A Difficult Passage”), Litsom k litsu (1957; “Face to Face”), Jamila (1958; Eng. trans. Jamilia), Pervy uchitel (1967; “The First Teacher”), Proshchay, Gulsary! (1967; Farewell, Gulsary!), and Bely parokhod (1970; The White Ship, also published as The White Steamship ). Subsequent novels, written originally in Russian, include I dolshe veka dlitsya den (1981; The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years), which blends Central Asian folklore traditions with science fiction, as well as Plakha (1986; The Place of the Skull) and Tavro Kassandry (1995; “The Mark of Cassandra”). He also cowrote, with Kaltai Mukhamedzhanov, Voskhozhdenie na Fudziyamu (first performed 1973; The Ascent of Mount Fuji), a play considered provocative during the Soviet era for its examination of the themes of authority and dissent. Many of Aytmatov’s stories appear in English translation in Piebald Dog Running Along the Shore, and Other Stories (1989) and Mother Earth, and Other Stories (1989).

Aytmatov was made a member of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. in 1966. In 1967 he became a member of the Executive Board of the Writers’ Union of the U.S.S.R., and he was awarded the Soviet State Prize for literature in 1968, 1977, and 1983. He served as an adviser to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and as the Soviet ambassador to Luxembourg. From the 1990s Aytmatov was the Kyrgyz ambassador to the European Union and several European countries. He also served as a member of parliament in Kyrgyzstan.