Digital Archive adds “The Rider from Kenkol”, the first Ottuk Library western in English

19 October 2026 · Library

Ormon Satarov's 1964 novel of a horse thief chased over the Kenkol Pass can now be read online, in Aidana Mukash kyzy's translation with the censored passages restored.

The National Library of Irad has added Ormon Satarov's The Rider from Kenkol (Kenkol Ashuusu) to its Digital Archive. The novel, No. 7 of the Ottuk Library, was published in Iradi by the Irad State Publishing House in 1964. Aidana Mukash kyzy's English translation, published by Arsha Books in 2022, is the first book of the series to appear in English. It can be read online in the library's reader or downloaded as a PDF.

The Ottuk Library was a series of 41 pocket westerns in Iradi, published from 1962 to 1968 at 27 tyiyn a copy and read in villages and winter camps across the country. In 2019 a literary preservation grant from the National Library paid for the purchase of the series' catalogue from the liquidator of Talas Kitep, the successor of the State Publishing House, on condition that a copy of every surviving original edition be deposited with the library. The Ottuk Library deposit now holds the 1960s editions of 38 of the 41 titles, which readers may consult in the Rare books and manuscripts room.

The censor cut about a tenth of the 1964 edition. The translation restores the missing passages from the author's typescript, which survived among the Talas Kitep papers, and marks each one in a note. In the margin of the first of them a censor's pencil has written “Mysticism, cut”. Beneath it, in a different hand, is one word: “Pity.”

“These were the books the country read in winter,” said the head of the library's rare books department. “It is good that one of them can now be read anywhere.” Readers who have copies of the three titles still missing from the deposit are asked to write to library@talasuniversity.org.