Chingiz Aytmatov and “Asrga tatigulik kun”

Chingiz Aytmatov was born on 12 December 1928 in the village of Shakar in the Talas valley of Kyrgyzstan. His father, To‘raqul, was an educated organiser who worked to end illiteracy; in 1937 the Soviet government arrested and destroyed him, and hard days fell on the family. During the war, at only fourteen, Chingiz worked as secretary of the village council, then as tax collector and accountant. He studied at a zoo-veterinary technical school and then at the Agricultural Institute (1953) and worked as a livestock specialist, while also translating between Russian and Kyrgyz and writing articles. In 1956–1958 he studied at the Higher Literary Courses in Moscow; the novellas “Face to Face” (1957) and “Jamila” (1958) were published. Later he worked as a magazine editor, correspondent and chairman of a cinematography council, and from 1991 was ambassador in Luxembourg and Belgium; he died on 10 June 2008 at the age of 79 (the textbook says “at eighty”, but he had not yet turned 80). The novellas “The First Teacher”, “Farewell, Gulsary” and “The White Ship” and the novels “The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years” (in Uzbek: «Asrga tatigulik kun»), “The Place of the Skull” (Uzbek: «Qiyomat»), “The Brand of Cassandra” and “When the Mountains Fall” made him known worldwide; his works were translated into 191 languages.