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Chingiz Aitmatov

Born

in Sheker, Kyrgyzstan

December 12, 1928

Died

June 10, 2008

Genre

Literature & Fiction, Classics

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Chinghiz Aitmatov (Чингиз Айтматов, Tschingis Aitmatow, Čingiz Ajtmatov, Tšõngõz Ajtmatov, Cengiz Aytmatov, Tsjingiz Ajtmatov, Tchinguiz Aïtmatov, جنكيز ايتماتوف) was an author who wrote in both Russian and Kyrgyz. He was the best known figure in Kyrgyzstan literature.

Aitmatov's parents were civil servants in Sheker. The name Chingiz is the same as the honorary title of Genghis Khan. In early childhood he wandered as a nomad with his family, as the Kyrgyzstan people did at the time. In 1937 his father was charged with "bourgeois nationalism" in Moscow, arrested and executed in 1938.

Aitmatov lived at a time when Kyrgyzstan was being transformed from one of the most remote lands of the Russian Empire to a republic of the USSR. The future aut Chinghiz Aitmatov (Чингиз Айтматов, Tschingis Aitmatow, Čingiz Ajtmatov, Tšõngõz Ajtmatov, Cengiz Aytmatov, Tsjingiz Ajtmatov, Tchinguiz Aïtmatov, جنكيز ايتماتوف) was an author who wrote in both Russian and Kyrgyz. He was the best known figure in Kyrgyzstan literature.

Aitmatov's parents were civil servants in Sheker. The name Chingiz is the same as the honorary title of Genghis Khan. In early childhood he wandered as a nomad with his family, as the Kyrgyzstan people did at the time. In 1937 his father was charged with "bourgeois nationalism" in Moscow, arrested and executed in 1938.

Aitmatov lived at a time when Kyrgyzstan was being transformed from one of the most remote lands of the Russian Empire to a republic of the USSR. The future author studied at a Soviet school in Sheker. He also worked from an early age. At fourteen he was an assistant to the Secretary at the Village Soviet. He later held jobs as a tax collector, a loader, an engineer's assistant and continued with many other types of work.

In 1946 he began studying at the Animal Husbandry Division of the Kirghiz Agricultural Institute in Frunze, but later switched to literary studies at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow, where he lived from 1956 to 1958. For the next eight years he worked for Pravda. His first two publications appeared in 1952 in Russian: The Newspaper Boy Dziuio and Ашым. His first work published in Kyrgyz was Ак Жаан (White Rain) in 1954, and his well known work Jamilya appeared in 1958. 1980 saw his first novel The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years; his next significant novel, The Scaffold was published in 1988. The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years and other writings were translated into several languages.

Aitmatov suffered kidney failure and on 16 May 2008 was admitted to a hospital in Nuremberg, Germany, where he died of pneumonia on 10 June 2008, aged 79. His obituary in The New York Times characterized him as "a Communist writer whose novels and plays before the collapse of the Soviet Union gave a voice to the people of the remote Soviet republic of Kyrgyz" and adds that he "later became a diplomat and a friend and adviser to the Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev."

Chinghiz Aitmatov belonged to the post-war generation of writers. His output before Jamila was not significant, a few short stories and a short novel called Face to Face. But it was Jamila that came to prove the author's work. Louis Aragon described the novellete as the world's most beautiful love story, raising it even above Rudyard Kipling's World's Most Beautiful Love Story. Aitmatov's representative works also include the short novels Farewell, Gulsary!, The White Ship, The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years, and The Scaffold.

Aitmatov was honoured in 1963 with the Lenin Prize for Jamila and later he was awarded a State prize for Farewell, Gulsary!. Aitmatov's art was glorified by admirers. Even critics of Aitmatov mentioned high quality of his novels.

Aitmatov's work has some elements that are unique specifically to his creative process. His work drew on folklore, not in the ancient sense of it; rather, he tried to recreate and synthesize oral tales in the context of contemporary life. This is prevalent in his work; in nearly every story he refers to a myth, a legend, or a folktale. In The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years a poetic legend about a young captive turned into a mankurt serves a tragic allegory and becomes a significant symbolic expression of the philosophy of the novel.

A second aspect of Aitmatov's writing is his ultimate closeness to our "little brothers" the animals, for their and our lives are intimately and inseparably connected. The two center characters of Farewell, Gulsary! are a man and his stallion. A camel plays a prominent role in The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years; one of the key turns of the novel which decide ...more

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Chingiz Aitmatov’s books

Average rating: 4.15 · 26,260 ratings · 2,076 reviews · 89 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years 4.34 avg rating — 5,041 ratings — published 1980 — 72 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Jamilia by Chingiz Aitmatov, James Riordan (Translator) 3.86 avg rating — 5,041 ratings — published 1958 — 98 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Toprak Ana by Chingiz Aitmatov, Refik Özdek (Translator), Cengiz Aytmatov 4.31 avg rating — 2,823 ratings — published 1963 — 41 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Beyaz Gemi by Chingiz Aitmatov, Refik Özdek (Translator) 4.11 avg rating — 4,088 ratings — published 1970 — 61 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	ගුරු ගීතය by Chingiz Aitmatov, දැදිගම වී. රුද්රිගු (අනුවාදක) 4.25 avg rating — 1,519 ratings — published 1962 — 32 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Cengiz Han'a Küsen Bulut by Chingiz Aitmatov, Cengiz Aytmatov, Refik Özdek (Translator) 4.21 avg rating — 1,037 ratings — published 1992 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Плаха by Chingiz Aitmatov, Чингиз Айтматов 4.26 avg rating — 1,459 ratings — published 1986 — 67 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Cemile - Sultan Murat by Chingiz Aitmatov, Refik Özdek (Translator), Cengiz Aytmatov 3.95 avg rating — 466 ratings — published 1975 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Farewell Gul'sary by Chingiz Aitmatov, J. French (Translator) 4.27 avg rating — 1,092 ratings — published 1966 — 35 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalım by Chingiz Aitmatov, Cengiz Aytmatov 4.26 avg rating — 708 ratings — published 1961 — 22 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Chingiz Aitmatov…

Series by Chingiz Aitmatov

Русская классика XX века (1 book)
by

Chingiz Aitmatov,

Cengiz Aytmatov

4.26 avg rating — 708 ratings

Seçilmiş əsərləri (1 book)
by

Chingiz Aitmatov,

Çingiz Aytmatov,

Bəxtiyar Vahabzadə (Foreword),

İshaq İbrahimov (Translator),

Xeyrulla Əliyev (Translator),

Cəmil Əlibəyov (Translator)

it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating

Quotes by Chingiz Aitmatov

“The only thing I'll never have is what I have lost for ever and ever... As long as I live, until I draw my last breath, I shall remember Asel and all those beautiful things that were ours. The day I was to leave I went to the lake and stood on the rise above it. I was saying good-bye to the Tien Shan mountains, to Issyk-Kul. Good-bye, Issyk-Kul, my unfinished song! How I wish I could take you with me, your blue waters and your yellow shores, but I can't, just as I can't take the woman I love with me. Goodbye, Asel. Good-bye, my pretty poplar in a red kerchief! Good-bye, my love, I want you to be happy...”
― Chingiz Aitmatov, Piebald Dog Running Along the Shore and Other Stories

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“لا يمكن للمرء أن يُعبّر دائمًا عن كل شيء بالكلمات.”
― Chingiz Aitmatov, Jamilia

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“And all of a sudden I began to understand his strangeness that made people shrug and mock; his dreaminess, his love of solitude, his silent manner. Now I understood why he sat on the look-out hill of an evening and why he spent a night by himself on the riverbank, why he constantly hearkened to sounds others could not hear and why his eyes would suddenly gleam and his drawn eyebrows twitch. He was a man deeply in love. I felt it was not simply a love for another person, it was somehow an uncommon, expansive love for life and earth. He had kept this love within himself, in his music, in his very being. A person with no feeling, no matter how good his voice, could never have sung like that.”
― Chingiz Aitmatov, Jamilia

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See all Chingiz Aitmatov's quotes »

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