A short, devastating novel about a city losing its living memory.

Set in Istanbul during a period of rapid urban change, the book follows three boys who trap songbirds to sell to wealthy city dwellers — a once-ordinary practice that becomes increasingly futile as development strips the city of trees, birds, and viable ground.

The violence here is quiet and systemic, progress erases without noticing, traditions rendered obsolete, beauty turned into commodity and then exhausted. The birds vanish. The boys drift. The city hardens.

Often read as an ecological parable, The Birds Have Also Gone is equally a novel about class, precarity, and cultural amnesia. As they often do, books of this ilk, it feels eerily contemporary. Alas, we need these books written decades ago that show us that loss operates much the same way it always has, and we aren't alone for it.