Our top six books this week: How China’s Uighurs are oppressed and much more

Bitter Freedom

Maurice Walsh

Faber, May 7

History of the Irish war of independence against the British that sets it in an international context of the rise of fascism, and communism in Russia. But when freedom came, for Irish people it was a bitter disappointment for a generation hoping for some sort of modernity.

On the Edge: The State and Fate of the World’s Tropical Rainforests

Claude Martin

Greystoke, May 31

Urbanisation, a global economy and demand for biofuels have put new pressure on rainforests. Martin, a former director of the World Wildlife Fund, surveys the health of the world’s fainforests and their eco-systems.

China’s Forgotten People

Nick Holdstock

I.B. Tauris

May 30

The book examines the restive Xinjiang province. Holdstock is one of few western observers to have lived in the region, and looks at the repression of the mainly Islamic population, the rise of terrorism and what it means for China’s rulers.

A God in Ruins

Kate Atkinson

Doubleday May 7

Teddy is a budding poet, RAF bomber pilot, husband and father who is trying to navigate the 20th century. But how will he be able to cope with a future he never expected to have? This is the companion work to Atkinson's top seller of 2014, Life After Life.

Green Glowing Skull

Gavin Corbett, Fourth Estate, May 7

Rickard Velily runs away from his dying parents and the drudgery of work in Dublin for the New York of his surreal imagination. Here, he hopes to be reborn as a tenor and revive old style songs and ballads for a hipster-dominated city and tech-obsessed. Richly dark comedy.

Make Something Up

Chuck Palahniuk, Jonathan Cape, May 7

Compilation of 21 stories and a novella to intrigue and disturb. Expect plenty of meditations on the absurdity of life and death and also a precursor to Palahniuk’s classic, Fight Club. Here we meet Tyler Durden and discover a previously unknown side.