BBC Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet has won the 2025 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction for her debut book, The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People's History of Afghanistan. The award, which carries a £30,000 prize fund, was presented at a ceremony at Bedford Square Gardens in London on June 11.
Doucet described hearing her name announced as the winner as “a bolt out of the blue”, adding that the event felt like “one big hug”. Speaking to The Mirror’s book critic Dr. Aimee Walsh after her win, the Canadian-born journalist said she had taken a “risk” in writing the book: “Just because you've managed to have a career in one kind of writing [doesn’t mean] that it will necessarily translate into another kind of writing.”
A People’s History Through a Single Hotel
The book centres on the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul, using it as a lens to explore modern Afghanistan’s history and the lives of the many people who lived and worked there through decades of turbulence. After hours of interviews with Afghans, Doucet completed the manuscript and sought their approval as her first readers.
Published in the UK in 2025, the book was longlisted for the Bailie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction before winning the Women’s Prize. One of Doucet’s hopes for the book is to “draw attention to a place in a people who have largely dropped from our headlines.” She added: “It's our story too. There were two decades of international engagement. There are Afghans arriving here now on a daily basis.”
Women and Girls in Afghanistan
The Taliban retook control of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, capturing Kabul after the U.S.-backed government collapsed. According to a 2025 UNESCO report, more than 80% of women working in the media have lost their jobs since 2021. The report also states: “Afghanistan stands out tragically as the only country in the world where secondary and higher education is strictly forbidden to girls and women. Nearly 2.2 million of them are now barred from attending school beyond the primary level due to this regressive decision.”
Doucet spoke out against the treatment of women and girls: “How can any of us allow ourselves to accept that that's normal? Afghans really feel forgotten. It's like Malala Yousafzai says, even picking up a book now as an act of resistance for Afghan girls.” She continued: “Sadly there's girls who are getting scholarships to British universities but they can't get visas because the foreign office is not giving them visas. It's a hard time to find hope, but we don't have the gift, as people who live in much more privileged circumstances, to lose hope for Afghans.”
Doucet’s Reporting Career
Doucet has reported from warzones worldwide, including Afghanistan, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Sudan, and the October 7 attacks. In The Finest Hotel in Kabul, she includes anecdotes from her time reporting there. One standout story dates from 1991, when she was the BBC’s Pakistan Afghanistan Correspondent in Islamabad. She received a call from the Haqqani fighters, an Islamist Afghan group, announcing their “major military victory” in taking the city of Khost in eastern Afghanistan. The caller asked if the BBC would like to cover it, but raised a concern: “We'd like the BBC to come, but we can't have women coming to the front line.”
They agreed Doucet could report if she dressed as a man. She recalled: “There I go dressed like a man, but they still know I'm the woman who has to be treated with respect. So, who's given the chair, the best chair, right next to the commander? Me. Dressed like a man, but very much a woman at the press conference with the commander with the beard down to his belly, not wanting to be seen with any women. And as we're driving into Afghanistan, as we through the tribal areas of Pakistan, my Pakistani colleague says to me, 'Please, in the pickup in front of us, they're arguing over whether you're a man or you're a woman.'”
