SOLD OUT 23rd September, 7.30pm - Lyse Doucet, The Finest Hotel in Kabul

Backstory, 71 Balham High Rd, SW12 9AP

Join us to welcome BBC's Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet as she discusses her new book The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People's History of Afghanistan. In it, Doucet masterfully presents a recent history of Afghanistan through the lens of the Inter-Continental Kabul, Afghanistan's first luxury hotel, which opened in 1969. It's an essential read for anyone interested in recent events in the Middle East.

About the book:

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.

Tickets Available:

Ticket only - £15 (This ticket does not include a copy of the book. You can decide to buy a copy on the night, but this will be charged in addition, at the full price of the book.)

Ticket & book  (RRP £22) - £30 (To collect on the night or in advance, after the publication date of 18 September.)