"He is in grave condition now," RIA Novosti's interlocutor said.
Chingiz Aitmatov was born in 1928 in Sheker village (Kyrgyzstan).
In 1948 he graduated from a veterinary college and entered the Agricultural University.
In 1952 he began publishing stories in the Kyrgyz language. Having graduated from the university in 1953 he worked at the research institute of stock breeding and kept writing and publishing his stories.
He entered the higher literature courses in Moscow in 1956. His story "Face to Face" was published in the Oktyabr (October) journal in 1958.
After that, Chingiz Aitmatov worked as a journalist in Frunze (Bishkek) and editor of the Literaturnaya Kirgizia (Literary Kyrgyzstan) journal.
In the 1960s-1980s he was deputy of the USSR Supreme Council, delegate of CPSU congresses and member of the editorial board of the popular Soviet journal Novy Mir (New World) and Literaturnaya Gazeta (Literary newspaper).
Chingiz Aitmatov was awarded with the Lenin Prize (1963) and State Prizes of the USSR (1968, 1980 and 1983).
In 1988-1990 he worked as editor-in-chief of the Inostrannaya Literatura (Foreign Literature) journal. In 1990-1994 the writer was Kyrgyzstan's ambassador to Benelux. His works were translated into many foreign languages.
His most famous novels are "The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years" (1980) and "The Scaffold" (1986).
President of the Central Asian Culture Assembly, Chingiz Aitmatov advocates Eurasian integration in the post-Soviet space after the EU model. "Due to the absence of borders one feels at home in any country. This is the greatest achievement in the historical development of Europe and mankind," the writer says.
Chingiz Aitmatov is also an initiator of the so-called Issyk Kul forum, which promotes the unification of western and oriental cultures.
