‘We can’t give up on Afghans’: Lyse Doucet on the remarkable ‘people’s history’ that won her the Women’s prize

The BBC’s chief international correspondent was awarded the prestigious nonfiction prize for The Finest Hotel in Kabul – which she hopes will bring more attention to the Taliban’s draconian treatment of women

Lyse Doucet first checked into Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel on Christmas Day 1988, as Soviet troops were withdrawing from Afghanistan at the end of a decade-long occupation. She expected to stay briefly. Instead, she remained for almost a year, and the hotel became her first Afghan home.

More than three decades later, it became the subject of her first book, The Finest Hotel in Kabul, which has now won the Women’s prize for nonfiction. But while the prize recognises a remarkable work of reportage and history, the BBC’s chief international correspondent is more interested in what it might do for the country that inspired it.

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Ruth Ozeki: ‘All my books are an attempt to recreate Charlotte’s Web’

The US author, film-maker and Zen Buddhist priest on smart young girls, the difference between irony and cynicism, and working her way through 13 volumes of Chekhov

My earliest reading memory
I was reading – or pretending to read – before my brain could encode memories, so probably around three or four? I “read” Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd, but that was mostly pictures.

My favourite book growing up
Charlotte’s Web by EB White. For years, I remembered it as a story about a little girl named Fern who saved her pet pig, Wilbur, but it’s not. It’s a story about a writer named Charlotte, who happens to be a spider, who spins words into her web that save Wilbur from slaughter. It’s about the power of language to save lives. Looking back at the books I’ve written, I can see now that all of them are an attempt to recreate Charlotte’s Web. It’s the perfect book.

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Phát minh như khoa học viễn tưởng của Trung Quốc thành sự thật, vượt mặt cả Elon Musk, hàng tỷ người trên thế giới sắp được hưởng lợi

Trung Quốc vừa trở thành quốc gia đầu tiên phê duyệt một giao diện não - máy tính xâm lấn để thương mại hóa. Đây là cột mốc quan trọng trong cuộc đua toàn cầu nhằm kết nối trực tiếp não người với các hệ thống kỹ thuật số.

Honda gây bất ngờ với xe tay ga 125cc “lột xác”, thiết kế táo bạo chưa từng thấy khiến giới trẻ chú ý

Từ lâu, xe tay ga 125cc của Honda luôn gắn liền với sự thực dụng và an toàn. Thế nhưng, những hình ảnh mới nhất từ Trung Quốc cho thấy hãng xe Nhật Bản đang chuẩn bị một cuộc thay đổi lớn, với một mẫu xe mang ngoại hình khiến nhiều người lầm tưởng là xe điện.