THE FINEST HOTEL in KABUL: A People's History of Afghanistan by Lyse Douset - Spotlight

A sweeping and immersive history of modern Afghanistan from the one of the world’s leading war correspondents.

In 1969, the luxury Hotel Inter-Continental Kabul opened its glistening white box, high on a hill, that reflected Afghanistan’s hopes of becoming a modern country, connected to the world.

Lyse Doucet – now the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, then a young reporter on her inaugural trip to Afghanistan – first checked into the Inter-Continental in 1988. In the decades since, she has witnessed a Soviet evacuation, a devastating civil war, the US invasion, and the rise, fall, and rise of the Taliban, all from within its increasingly battered walls. The Inter-Con has never closed its doors.

Now, she weaves together the experiences of the Afghans who have kept the hotel running to craft a richly immersive history of their country. It is the story of Hazrat, the septuagenarian housekeeper who still holds fast to his Inter-Continental training from the hotel’s 1970s glory days – an era of haute cuisine and high fashion, when Afghanistan was a kingdom and Kabul was the ‘Paris of Central Asia’. Of Abida, who became the first female chef after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. And of Malalai and Sadeq, the twenty-somethings who seized every opportunity offered by two decades of fragile democracy – only to see the Taliban come roaring back in 2021.

LYSE DOUCET is a Canadian-born journalist and the BBC's Chief International Correspondent. Throughout a career spanning four decades, she has reported from countries including Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, and Syria, leading the BBC's coverage of significant events such as the invasion of Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, and the Syrian Civil War. 

She received an OBE in the Queen's Honours list in 2014, and was admitted to the Order of Canada in 2019. Her awards include the Columbia School of Journalism Award in 2016 and an Emmy in 2014 for her team's reporting from Syria. In 2021, she was nominated for a Peabody Award for her work as a writer and reporter on the BBC podcast Afghanistan: Documenting A Crucial Year. Doucet has fifteen honorary doctorates from leading British and Canadian Universities. 

She has a Master’s degree in International Relations from the University of Toronto, and a BA Hons. from Queen’s University in Kingston. She is also a senior fellow of Massey College of the University of Toronto. Doucet has been reporting on Afghanistan since 1988. She visits the Inter-Continental whenever she is in Kabul.