Bayangali AlimzhanovABOUT THE AUTHOR Bayangali Tokanovich Alimzhanov is a Kazakh poet, author, playwright, aqyn (improviser), zhyrshy, manaschi (performer of the epic poem, Manas) and Honoured Worker of Kazakhstan. The winner of the international Maldybaev prize of Kyrgzstan, he was born on October 16th 1954 in Stepnyak in the Akmola Region and graduated from the Faculty of Philological at KazSU. The author of over forty books, four feature films and six documentaries, he has won the Republican Grand Prize twenty-two times and the Contest of Storytellers. He has also been a prize-winner at the International Manaschi Competition. In Kazakhstan, the collected works of Alimzhanov have been published in sixteen volumes. His works have been translated into English, Russian, Spanish, French, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, German, Turkish, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Karakalpak, Tatar, Bashkir, Uyghur, Udmurt and Mongolian. He writes mainly in Kazakh and Russian. Read More Read Less