Chingiz Aitmatov was born in 1928 raised in the Talas Region of Kyrgyzstan. Originally educated as a veterinarian, Aitmatov later studied at the Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow and then worked for the Soviet newspaper Pravda for eight years, while also writing novels and novellas that captured life in Kyrgyzstan at the time. He became the Kyrgyz SSR's public face, traveling the world and later working as a diplomat.