Lyse Doucet is known worldwide as the Chief International Correspondent and senior presenter for the BBC — radio and television. She is an award-winning journalist and now as debut writer too. She won the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction 2026 for her fabulous book The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan.

The Finest Hotel in Kabul is an incredible history of Afghanistan of approximately five decades. As Lyse says that “In my lifetime, Afghanistan has been a kingdom, a republic, an Islamic emirate — these changes tell us a story.” She maps the transformations in society via her profiles of individuals, and yet it is a “polyphonic” narrative nonfiction. She delves into the past, she resurrects influential people like the singer Ahmad Zahir and many others. She covers the length and breadth of society. It is incredibly difficult to distil the book into a few lines except to say that it is an accessible account of a nation that has lived and is living through turbulent times. Philippe Sands has justifiably said that it is “utterly compelling” and Elif Shafak has called it “simply unforgettable”. Lyse has been visiting Kabul since 1988. Her familiarity with the people, the terrain, the intricate politics, the understanding of the histories of the politics, the politicians, the warlords etc comes through with a lot of humility, depth, empathy and the desire to channel her multiple experiences and share it with the world. It is truly worth reading.

A few days ago, I had the honour and privilege to interview Lyse Doucet for the TOI Bookmark* podcast. I will upload the Spotify link to the interview once it is available. She is an extremely busy journalist but had the grace to make time for us to record an episode of the podcast. More so, when she is no longer promoting her book or recording any podcasts.

7 Nov 2026

*TOI Bookmark is a weekly podcast on literature and publishing. TOI is an acronym for the Times of India (TOI) which is the world’s largest newspaper and India’s No. 1 digital news platform with over 3 billion page views per month. The TOI website is one of the most visited news sites in the world with 200 million unique monthly visitors and about 1.6 billion monthly page views. TOI is the world’s largest English newspaper with a daily circulation of more than 4 million copies, across many editions, and is read daily by approximately 13.5 million readers. The podcasts are promoted across all TOI platforms. I have recorded more than 214+ sessions with Jnanpith, Padma Bhushan, and Padma Shree awardees, International Booker Prize winners, Booker Prize winners, Women’s Prize for Fiction, Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer Prize, Stella Prize, AutHer Awards, Erasmus Prize, BAFTA, Turing Prize, Magsaysay Prize etc. Sometimes the podcast interviews are carried across all editions of the print paper with a QR code embedded in it.

Some of the authors who have been interviewed are: Yáng Shuāng-zǐ & Lin King, David Szalay, Banu Mushtaq, Deepa Bhashti, Samantha Harvey, Jenny Erpenbeck, Michael Hoffman, Paul Murray, V. V. Ganeshananthan, Hisham Matar, Anita Desai, Amitava Kumar, Hari Kunzro, Venki Ramakishnan, Siddhartha Deb, Elaine Feeney, Manjula Padmanabhan, Edwin Frank, Jonathan Escoffery, Joya Chatterji, Arati Kumar-Rao, Paul Lynch, Dr Kathryn Mannix, Cat Bohannon, Sebastian Barry, Shabnam Minwalla, Paul Harding, Ayobami Adebayo, Pradeep Sebastian, G N Devy, Angela Saini, Manav Kaul, Amitav Ghosh, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Damodar Mauzo, Geetanjali Mishra, William Dalrymple, Sanjoy Roy, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Andrew Miller, Catherine Chidgey, Dr Rachel Clarke, Charlotte Wood, Megha Majumdar, Kiran Desai, Ken Follett, Philippe Sands, Victoria Bateman, Anuradha Roy, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Danny Rensch, Anne Beate Hovind, Tayari Jones, Lyse Doucet, M. John Harrison, Luke Kennard, and Annie Ernaux.

It is available on Spotify.