yeovilliteraryfestival

Lyse Doucet: The Finest Hotel in Kabul

Lyse Doucet first arrived at the Kabul Inter-Continental Hotel on Christmas Day 1988, the day after her 30th birthday. A junior BBC reporter, she was there to cover the withdrawal of Soviet troops following their decade-long occupation of Afghanistan. 

Today, Lyse is the BBC's Chief International Correspondent and has led BBC coverage of events ranging from the Arab Spring to the Sudanese Civil War. But she still visits the Inter-Continental Hotel whenever she is in Afghanistan. She counts many of its staff and fellow guests her close friends and here, for the first time, she tells their stories.

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 twentysomething 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.

This event will be held in Westlands Ballroom.

Tickets: £16.00
Footlights: Discount applies

This is a Yeovil Literary Festival Event

A £1.50 ticket levy is included in all stated ticket prices.
All bookings are subject to a £2 transaction Fee.