MOSCOW, March 15 /TASS/. Russian writer Valentin Rasputin has died in a Moscow clinic. He was in a coma when he died, the writer’s granddaughter Antonina told TASS.

"He died in hospital yesterday. We are going to decide on the time and place for the farewell ceremony and funeral tomorrow," she said.

Rasputin would have turned 78 on March 15.

In recent years, he survived two serious losses: his daughter died in a car accident in 2006; his wife died in 2012.

Valentin Rasputin was born to a family of a peasant in the village of Atalanka of the Ust-Uda district of the Irkutsk region on March 15, 1937. After school, he became a student of the philological faculty of the Irkutsk State University in Eastern Siberia.

Rasputin was a representative of the so-called "village prose", a movement in the post-war Soviet literature. His most famous books include "Farewell to Matyora", "The French Lessons," "The Last Deadline", "Live and Remember", etc.