The Russian novelist, Anatoly Rybakov, has died.

Mr Rybakov won worldwide fame in the second half of the 1980s with his novel, "The Children of the Arbat", which depicted life in Moscow during the Stalin era.

The book was published when Mikhail Gorbachev was Soviet president and was acclaimed as typifying the spirit of openness or glasnost that he encouraged.

Mr Rybakov died in his sleep after undergoing heart surgery in New York.