Lyse Doucet, chief international correspondent for the BBC, was last week awarded the £30,000 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction for her first book, The Finest Hotel in Kabul, in which she offers a history of Afghanistan through the stories of staff at the Intercontinental, a regular base for reporters. Interviewed in The Guardian on Saturday by Emma Loffhagen, Doucet said:
“Afghanistan has largely slipped from the headlines. Perhaps this win will bring some attention to the country. None of us should be ready to accept a situation in which we live in a world where there is a country where girls cannot be educated after they’re 16, where women cannot go to university, where women are barred from so many jobs. This is something we should all be angry about.”
Doucet first checked into the InterContinental in 1988 to cover the withdrawal of Soviet troops. In the decades since, she has witnessed a civil war, the post- 9/11 US-led invasion, and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban. On her approach to the book, which the judges described as “a perfect work of narrative non-fiction”, she said: “I was conscious that Afghanistan has a very difficult and violent history. I needed to find something that would draw people in rather than push them away. I didn’t want people to close the book and say: ‘It’s too dark. It’s too bloody.’ So a hotel was a device to tell the story in a way people could recognise.”