Mother Earth' is one of the world’s most poignant stories of the tragedy of war as well as a passionate plea for world peace. The heroine Tolgonai tells the story of her life, encompassing the tempestuous Soviet period of change as it affected a Kirghiz village from the 1920s to after the Second World War. \n \nChingiz Aitmatov was a Kyrgyz author who wrote in both Kyrgyz and Russian. . One of his first novellas, Jamilya, is called "the most beautiful love story in the world" by the French writer Louis Aragon