Fragility and hope endure in Kabul’s ‘finest’ hotel

When the Intercontinental Hotel first opened its doors in Kabul in 1969, Afghanistan was embracing modernity. In the decades that followed, it kept those doors open through a Soviet occupation, civil wars, a US-led invasion and the rise, fall and rise again of the Taliban. Journalist Lyse Doucet follows the lives of the hotel’s staff as they navigate decades of change in her new book “The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan.”