Books of 2022: JP O'Malley picks tales of a troubled world

In a year pockmarked by extreme climate crisis, war, intrusive technology and totalitarian regimes, JP O’Malley selects his books of 2022

Buildings at the Artux City Vocational Skills Education Training Service Center, believed to be a re-education camp where mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are detained, north of Kashgar in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region. It is suspected that as many as one million ethnic Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities are held in a network of internment camps in Xinjiang. Picture: Greg Baker / AFP via Getty Images

2022 saw China making sporting history. In February, Beijing became the first city ever to have hosted both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games. Many western governments focused on a more urgent political matter though: China’s alleged human rights abuses. The US, Britain, Australia, and Canada all announced diplomatic boycotts of the Winter Olympics, which began on February 4.

Today, the international community continues to accuse the Chinese government of detaining over a million Muslims in reeducation camps. Some detainees come from Kazakh and Hui ethnic minorities. But most are Uyghur: a Turkic-speaking Muslim group of 12m people residing in China’s autonomous northwestern region of Xinjiang. China categorically refutes these allegations, claiming it’s carrying out a “vocational training program”.