Olzhas Suleimenov was born
in Alma-Ata (currently Almaty),
Kazakhstan, in 1936. He graduated
Kazakh State University in 1959, and
then Gorky Institute of Literature in
Moscow in 1961. Between 1962
and1971, he actively worked as a
journalist, and in 1983, he became
the head of the Kazakhstan's Writers
Union. He works are written in the
Russian language. His most celebrated
novel, Az and I, was published in 1975.
The novel created a great stir, and was
criticized by the literary elite in Russia.
Suleimenov was charged with "national chauvinism" and "glorification
of feudal nomadic culture." His other works include: Argamaks (1961),
Earth, Bow to the Man (1961), Kind Time of Sunrise (1964), Year of
the Monkey (1967), The Book of Clay (1969), and Prehistoric Turks -
On the Origins of Ancient Turkic Languages and Writing (2002).
Suleimenov earned great acclaim on a global scale in 1989,
when he organized the international environmental movement
"Nevada - Semipalatinsk" which campaigned for the closure of
both the nuclear test sites in the Nevada desert, as well as in the
Semipalatinsk Province of Kazakhstan.
In 1995, Suleimenov was appointed as
Kazakhstan's Official Ambassador to the
Vatican. From 2002 onwards, he served
as Kazakhstan's Ambassador for the
UNESCO in Paris. The Code of the Word
is one of his latest literary works.
