Abu Sarsenbaev

Born Oct. 28, 1905, in the village of Morskoe, in what is now Dengizskii Raion, Gur’ev Oblast. Soviet Kazakh writer. Member of the CPSU since 1928.

From 1931 to 1934, Sarsenbaev studied at the Communist Higher Educational Institution in Alma-Ata, and from 1936 to 1941 he served as director of the State Publishing House of Kazakhstan. He participated in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45. Sarsenbaev, who published his first work in 1937, is the author of anthologies of verses and narrative poems, including A Gift of the Heart (1938), Song of Love and Pride (1949), Unwritten Book (1962), and The Height and the Ascent (1971). Some of his prose works—the novels Those Born on the Waves (1953; Russian translation, 1957) and Melody of the Sea (1969), the novella The Captain’s Son (1961; Russian translation, 1963), and others—deal with the lives of fishermen and sailors. The short-story anthology An Officer’s Diary (1960) and the collection of documentary prose A Warrior’s Monologue (1972) deal with the subject of war. Sarsenbaev has been awarded three orders and various medals.