The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan is about an institution tasked with the job of housing strangers – Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel. Through this hotel, which sits high on a hill, and the people within it, seasoned BBC journalist and current foreign affairs editor, Lyse Doucet, attempts to tell an immersive history of the sweeping changes that Afghanistan has faced since it opened in 1969.

The book has won the 2026 Women’s Prize in non-fiction. As a scholar of the region, I can tell you that the hotel is a useful lens through which to tell the recent history of Afghanistan.

The modern state of Afghanistan occupies an integral position in the Silk Road region. It was home to an expansive and historic civilisation in which commerce and hospitality had long been entwined with one another.

Inns, better known as caravanseries in the region, played a central role in the provision of security, the exchange of information, and the formation of identity for traders.

Beyond caravanserais, caring for strangers occupied a critical place in the local moral universe of people in the region. In some contexts, this took place in communal gathering places; in others, in villages or the guesthouses of the wealthy and powerful. Across the region, though,...

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