He was born to a Kyrgyz father and Tatar mother. Aitmatov"s parents were civil servants in Sheker. In 1937 his father was charged with bourgeois nationalism in Moscow, arrested and executed in 1938. 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. 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.