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The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People's History of Afghanistan by Lyse Doucet

When the Inter-Continental Hotel opened in Kabul in 1969, its gleaming white edifice embodied Afghanistan’s hopes of becoming an affluent, modern country. Five decades later, it is a dilapidated, shrapnel-damaged shell that has endured civil war, terrorist attack, the US occupation and the rise, fall, and rise of the Taliban. But its decaying grandeur still hints at the enduring hopes of ordinary Afghans that one day, they will live in peace and prosperity.

In her almost four decades of reporting from Afghanistan where she first arrived in 1988, the day after her 30th birthday, the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, Lyse Doucet has stayed at the ‘Inter-Con’ many times, and has come to know many of the hotel’s staff. Their stories - moving, often tragic but always inspiring in their inshallah tenacity - are at the heart of this captivating, deeply humane book in which Doucet charts the recent history of Afghanistan through the lives of those staff members; from Hazrat, the octogenarian receptionist and Abida, the first female chef to work in the hotel kitchen; to Sadeq, the 24 year old on the front desk who personifies the ambitions of a new generation of Afghans.

The result is a deeply affecting microcosmic work which reads like a series of beautifully crafted short stories. It reminds us that when the news agenda has moved on and our screens are filled with the horrors of other conflicts, people we’ve stopped thinking about remain; battered and scarred but still standing, and carrying on as best they can, just like the Inter-Continental itself.

In a publishing season noted for its celebrity memoirs, this book by one of the most prominent of BBC journalists is admirably anything but. Rather Doucet gives herself only a small walk-on part as she centres her writing - as she does her reporting - firmly on the lives of others.

Published on 18 September (Hutchinson Heinemann)