Though Hotel Exile and The Finest Hotel in Kabul share similar settings, they are very different books. In Hotel Exile, Rogoyska tells stories of anti-Nazi resistance centred on the Hôtel Lutetia on Paris’s Left Bank, which in the mid-1930s was a hub for anti-fascist activists before, ironically, becoming the headquarters of the German military intelligence service during the war. The Finest Hotel in Kabul is more of a portrait of the titular hotel itself, the Inter-Continental – though it provides a lens through which to view five decades of Afghanistan’s history.
Both places have the kind of otherworldly feel we hope for in a hotel-set story: while the decadent Lutetia’s “undulating facade and shell-like canopies” line the street, at the Inter-Continental, a “sweeping canopy of twinkling lights” is “mirrored in the glimmering pool”. (Even after the 2018 Taliban attack, which left 40 dead, the Inter-Continental’s refurbed Bukhara restaurant retained “its blue-and-gold flourish as if nothing had happened”.)
Why do hotels have such appeal for storytellers? For Rogoyska, every city has a hotel that captures “the spirit of the place”, whether it be a Ritz-Carlton, a Savoy, or an InterContinental. They are places where politicians meet and film stars hang out, meaning they possess “a certain cachet”, and “glamour by association”.
The cocktail of visitors that could come through the door on any given day means hotels are “democratic spaces”, she says. “Anyone can walk into the bar or restaurant, or book a room, and all are welcome so long as they can pay their bill.” Indeed, both books feature a real assortment of guests: “In the din of the Inter-Con dancefloor, spies and envoys, expatriates and Afghans, let their hair and their guard down,” Doucet writes.
Hotels are – almost uniquely – both “private spaces” and “public stages”, says Doucet. Dramas unfold both “behind closed doors” and “in crowded piano bars”, Rogoyska adds. (That sense of possibility combined with the inherent claustrophobia is part of what makes them great murder mystery settings too.)
There is also something entrancing about a hotel’s “reassuring rituals and rhythms” as “momentous events unfold and unravel outside and inside its walls”, says Doucet. Her book opens with a wedding at the Inter-Con in summer 2021, as rumours that the Taliban are back begin to spread (they turn out to be true). Yet even when the attendees dash out, banquet manager Sadozai stands “dutifully at the double door, a rictus grin on his face, until the very last guest had left. He stood as tall and straight as he could.”
And in times of conflict, “there are few buildings so well set up to provide shelter to the vulnerable”, says Rogoyska. “Where else would you find an international telephone exchange, backup generators, running water? Tables and chairs in abundance, supplies of bedding and towels, kitchens filled with giant pots and pans? And, most crucially, that extraordinary figure, the hotel manager, a figure of calm decisiveness in the centre of a storm.”
Making a splash … The Inter-Continental Hotel Kabul. Photograph: Theodore Liasi/Alamy
