Lyse Doucet

An incredible book – vivid and beautifully written, it captures the soul of Afghanistan through an age of hopes and heartbreak, as well as one of constant change. A tender, wise and quietly devastating book.

PETER FRANKOPAN, author of THE SILK ROADS

An ingenious method of storytelling, and what a story the Inter-Continental Kabul has to tell. Lyse Doucet writes with verve and insight, and a clear warmth of feeling for Afghanistan and its people.

The Finest Hotel in Kabul plays to all Lyse Doucet’s strengths. Clarity, empathy, depth of knowledge and innate grasp of fine detail. Her subject is not just a hotel, but a hotel that tells the story of four decades of Afghanistan’s proud and sometimes unbelievably painful history. This is a most readable account of joy, despair and resilience in one of the world’s most fascinating countries.

As with the voice, so with the book: distinct, original, humane, powerful and utterly compelling.

PHILIPPE SANDS, author of East West Street

A book brimming with deep insight, courage and conscience. Everyone should read this. Astonishingly beautiful, subtle and simply unforgettable.

ELIF SHAFAK, author of There Are Rivers in the Sky

A story of a country and a people, told with knowledge, insight and tenderness. I’ve been waiting for a Lyse Doucet book for a long time and what she has produced here is testament to her humanity as well as her journalistic eye.

MISHAL HUSAIN, Sunday Times bestselling author of Broken Threads

The Finest Hotel in Kabul offers an unflinching and intimate portrait of contemporary Afghanistan, from the hopeful days following the fall of the Taliban’s first regime to the chilling return of fear under their second rule. At the heart of the story is a woman who prepares food with her hands, yet in doing so, is quietly shaping the future. As the Taliban return, laughter fades, and like thousands of other women, she is pushed to the margins. This book is a powerful historical account of lives lived in the crossfire of conflict and power, a story too rarely heard, and too often overlooked. Broken promises of peace for a people who have lived, generation after generation, in the shadow of war and politics.

What a beautiful book – inventive, compassionate, witty, brilliantly structured. An extraordinary introduction to Afghanistan, and a tribute to one of the finest correspondents of our age.

RORY STEWART, author of Politics On the Edge and The Places in Between

Lyse Doucet is a consummate storyteller and first class journalist . . . A powerful and evocative account of a people who have borne tumultuous waves of progress and repression, from mini skirts and white weddings to burqas and gross Taliban denials of freedoms. A brilliant and important reminder of the cost of wars.

A People’s History of Afghanistan

When the Inter-Continental Kabul opened in 1969, Afghanistan’s first luxury hotel symbolised a dream of a modernising country connected to the world. 
 
More than fifty years on, the Inter-Continental is still standing. It has endured Soviet occupation, multiple coups, a grievous civil war, a US invasion and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban. History lives within its scarred windows and walls. 
 
Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, has been checking into the Inter-Continental since 1988. And here, she uses its story to craft a richly immersive history of modern Afghanistan. 
 
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 Asia’. It is the story of Abida, who became the first female chef to cook in the Inter-Con’s famous kitchen after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. And it is the lives of Malalai and Sadeq, the twenty-something staff who seized every opportunity offered by two decades of fragile democracy – only to witness the Taliban roaring back in 2021. 
 
The result is a remarkably vivid history of how Afghans have survived a half century of destruction and disruption. It is the story of a hotel but also the story of a people.

Lyse Doucet

Praise for The Finest Hotel in Kabul

An incredible book – vivid and beautifully written, it captures the soul of Afghanistan through an age of hopes and heartbreak, as well as one of constant change. A tender, wise and quietly devastating book.

An ingenious method of storytelling, and what a story the Inter-Continental Kabul has to tell. Lyse Doucet writes with verve and insight, and a clear warmth of feeling for Afghanistan and its people.

The Finest Hotel in Kabul plays to all Lyse Doucet’s strengths. Clarity, empathy, depth of knowledge and innate grasp of fine detail. Her subject is not just a hotel, but a hotel that tells the story of four ...

An incredible book – vivid and beautifully written, it captures the soul of Afghanistan through an age of hopes and heartbreak, as well as one of constant change. A tender, wise and quietly devastating book.

An ingenious method of storytelling, and what a story the Inter-Continental Kabul has to tell. Lyse Doucet writes with verve and insight, and a clear warmth of feeling for Afghanistan and its people.

The Finest Hotel in Kabul plays to all Lyse Doucet’s strengths. Clarity, empathy, depth of knowledge and innate grasp of fine detail. Her subject is not just a hotel, but a hotel that tells the story of four ...

An incredible book – vivid and beautifully written, it captures the soul of Afghanistan through an age of hopes and heartbreak, as well as one of constant change. A tender, wise and quietly devastating book.

An ingenious method of storytelling, and what a story the Inter-Continental Kabul has to tell. Lyse Doucet writes with verve and insight, and a clear warmth of feeling for Afghanistan and its people.

The Finest Hotel in Kabul plays to all Lyse Doucet’s strengths. Clarity, empathy, depth of knowledge and innate grasp of fine detail. Her subject is not just a hotel, but a hotel that tells the story of four ...

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