Chinghiz Aitmatov

Lore & Background

Chinghiz Aitmatov was a Kyrgyz author who wrote primarily in Russian, though also in his native Kyrgyz, and is regarded as one of the most prominent figures in his country’s literature. He was born to a Kyrgyz father and Tatar mother, both civil servants in the village of Sheker. His father was arrested in Moscow in 1937 on charges of "bourgeois nationalism" and executed the following year. Aitmatov came of age during the transformation of Kyrgyzstan from a remote territory of the Russian Empire into a Soviet republic. He attended a Soviet school in Sheker and began working at a young age, holding jobs as an assistant to the Village Soviet secretary, a tax collector, a loader, and an engineer’s assistant. After studying animal husbandry at the Kirghiz Agricultural Institute, he switched to literary studies at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow. He later worked for the newspaper *Pravda* and joined the Communist Party in 1959. His breakthrough work was the 1958 novel *Jamila*, which tells the story of a village girl who falls in love with a disabled soldier during wartime. Aitmatov’s writing frequently incorporates folklore, myths, and legends, blending them with contemporary life. He often explores the deep connection between humans and animals, as seen in *Farewell, Gyulsary!*, which centers on a man and his stallion, and *The Place of the Skull*, which opens and closes with the story of a wolf pack. His novel *The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years* includes a poetic legend about a captive turned into a "mankurt," serving as a tragic allegory. Aitmatov’s work also reflects the political and social upheavals of Kyrgyzstan’s Soviet transformation. He later served on the Supreme Soviet and endorsed the glasnost policies of Mikhail Gorbachev. He died of pneumonia in Nuremberg, Germany, in 2008, and was buried in the Ata-Beyit cemetery in Kyrgyzstan, a site he helped establish.

Reader's Guide

Chinghiz Aitmatov’s literary career began in the post-war generation. His early output was modest, with his first Russian-language publications appearing in 1952, followed by his first Kyrgyz work in 1954. His breakthrough came with the 1958 novel *Jamila*, narrated by an adolescent boy, which tells of a village girl who falls in love with a disabled former soldier while her own husband is away at war. Aitmatov’s writing drew on folklore, not in an ancient sense, but by recreating and synthesizing oral tales in contemporary contexts; nearly every story refers to a myth, legend, or folktale. In *The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years* (1980), a poetic legend about a captive turned into a “mankurt” serves as a tragic allegory central to the novel’s philosophy. His work also touches on Kyrgyzstan’s transformation from the Russian empire to a USSR republic and the lives of its people during that change. This is prevalent in *Farewell, Gyulsary!*, which, though about friendship between a man and his stallion, serves as a tragic allegory of Soviet political rule, exploring the loss and grief many Kyrgyz faced. A second aspect of his writing is his closeness to animals, whose lives are intimately connected with human ones: a camel plays a key role in *The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years*, and *The Place of the Skull* (1987) begins and ends with the story of a wolf pack. Aitmatov was honored with the Lenin Prize in 1963 for the compilation *Tales of the Mountains and Steppes*. His work was glorified by admirers and praised even by critics for its high quality.

Did You Know?

• He worked as a tax collector, loader, and engineer's assistant before becoming a writer.
• His novel The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years includes a poetic legend about a 'mankurt' as a tragic allegory.
• He was a diplomat accredited by three countries: the Soviet Union, Russia, and Kyrgyzstan.