Our registration is suspended. We can’t take orders right now, but you can still read our books. Find out more
Independent press · Since 2009

Small books from the Old City of Talas.

Poetry, stories and songs in Iradi, Russian and English. A few hundred copies at a time, kept in print for as long as someone wants to read them.

Browse our books Read Twelve Kilometres
Our books

The catalogue

Every book we have published, from our first hand-bound poems to the anthology that got us suspended.

AnthologyBaylanyshsyzNo SignalArsha
2023

Baylanyshsyz

42 poets · Poems · 80 pp.

Poems written in Talas in October 2023, during the student protests and the days without mobile data.

250 somUnavailable
Nazgul Ermekova · Dilbar PakAk-Boz and the Winter RoadAk-Boz Kyshky JolgoArsha
Children

Ak-Boz and the Winter Road

Nazgul Ermekova · 2021 · 32 pp.

A grey foal too small for the move to the winter pasture goes anyway. With the herding songs at the back.

220 somUnavailable
Ulan Abdyraim uuluToguzNineArsha
Stories

Toguz

Ulan Abdyraim uulu · 2019 · 120 pp.

Nine stories about horse thieves, the elders who judge them and the ninefold fine. Once told by a horse.

240 somUnavailable
Cover of Twelve Kilometres
Stories Free to read

Twelve Kilometres

Aikokul Tursunbek kyzy · 2015 / 2016

Twelve stories and a coda from the partition years. In Iradi and in English.

180 somRead PDF →
Kubat Turdakun uulu (ed.)Jol YrlaryRoad SongsArsha
Songs

Jol Yrlary

Kubat Turdakun uulu (ed.) · 2013 · 148 pp.

Ninety-four horseback songs from the upper Chatkal, recorded 2008–2012, with notes on every singer.

200 somUnavailable
Igor LysenkoNavbahor NotebooksNavbakhorskie tetradiArsha
Poetry

Navbahor Notebooks

Igor Lysenko · 2012 · 112 pp.

A refinery fitter's poems from a Nurzhan microdistrict, in Russian with Iradi facing translations.

160 somUnavailable
Nurila Bekbolot kyzyKök TütünBlue SmokeArsha
Poetry

Kök Tütün

Nurila Bekbolot kyzy · 2010 · 64 pp.

Our very first book: thirty-one poems about the Talas valley in winter, bound by hand in the back room.

120 somOut of print

Got a manuscript?

We read poems, stories, memoir and songs in Iradi, Russian and English.

How to submit

Twelve Kilometres, our best-loved book
Our story

Two teachers, one borrowed computer, and a room above the saddlers.

Arsha Books was started in 2009 by Nazgul Ermekova and Talant Imanaliev, two former teachers, in a room above a saddler’s workshop in the Köhne Diz. Arsha is juniper, the smoke of blessings in the mountains. We wanted books that were small, slow-burning and a little sharp.

  • Books in Iradi first, with Russian and English alongside
  • Short print runs, printed in Talas
  • No ISBNs (Irad doesn’t have an agency), but every book is deposited with the State Archives
  • Funded by our readers, never by parties, companies or governments
Get in touch
2009founded in the Old City
8books published
5,400copies printed
3languages
“I read Twelve Kilometres on the night bus to Tash-Kömür and missed my stop, and I was not sorry.”
A reader from Nurzhan, by email

A note to our readers

In 2024, a few months after we published Baylanyshsyz, the Department of Public Information suspended our registration. The Department says this concerns a licensing irregularity. Human Rights Watch has called it censorship. We have appealed, and we are waiting.

Until the suspension is lifted we can’t print, and bookshops in the Zone can’t stock our books. With our authors’ agreement, some of our books are free to read here. Books you have already bought are, of course, still yours.

Thank you for staying with us. Nazgul & Talant

Submissions

Send us your writing

Send ten poems or one story, with a short letter about yourself, to arsha.books@attelkom.net. We read everything, slowly, and we answer everything, more slowly. We can’t publish new books at the moment, but we haven’t stopped reading.

Contact

Say hello

Visit

Köhne Diz, upstairs from the saddlers, Talas. Saturday mornings, when someone is in.

Write

arsha.books@attelkom.net

Message

Find us on Tulpar: @arshakitep