Women's Prize Mini Reviews - The Finest Hotel in Kabul and A Guardian and a Thief

Title: The Finest Hotel in Kabul* 

Author: Lyse Ducet

Rating: 4.25 / 5 stars

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Favorite Quote: “The distance between life and death was now measured in inches and minutes, by everyday choices to take one street or another, to stay in one place or leave, to go out or to stay at home.” Ducet, Lyse. The Finest Hotel in Kabul. Allen Lane, 2025, pg. 170. 

Review: The Finest Hotel in Kabul is a fairly comprehensive history of Afghanistan from 1971 to 2021-ish, told through the lens of the Hotel Inter-Continental Kabul, both in its grandeur and in its decline. This is a book of both the macro and the micro - the macro being the history of Afghanistan, the micro being the stories of the men and women responsible for keeping the hotel running even when Afghanistan was plunged into war, chaos, and destruction. Outside memoirs that also have a macro element, this is my favorite type of nonfiction - books where I am learning something I know little about while also learning about specific people related to that topic.

Sometimes it’s hard for me to review nonfiction books, and this feels like one of them. I think the thing that is working the best here (as opposed to another book from the Women’s Prize nonfiction list that I will eviscerate in a review in the future) is that while Ducet is a “character” in this book - aka, she is a reporter who spent quite a bit of time in Afghanistan throughout its many eras, because this is not her story, she stays fairly removed from the narrative as a whole.

The book is also incredibly timely - America is once again engaging in aggression towards a country in this region (specifically Iran as I was reading this book, but also its contributions to the ongoing genocide in Gaza), and this book, while centered on Afghanistan and its shifting governments, it doesn’t shy away from the ways in which the US and the USSR/Russia use various countries as proxies during the Cold War, and the US’s continued presence in Afghanistan and its contribution’s to the instability in the country and the region.

Peppering in the stories of specific individuals from the hotel humanizes this book in a way that history textbooks don’t (that and the narrative writing are what I often find compelling in a way I never found in history class). Some of these served as macro/micro stories of their own - specifically how the existence of women shifted throughout time. 

About that Quote: So many of the quotes from this book encompass its spirit - here is a land, and a specific landmark - the hotel, that is in a constant state of flux. But this really lays it out - this book is about survival - of Afghanistan, of the Hotel Inter-Continental Kabul, of the people who work there. 

Title: A Guardian and a Thief*

Author: Megha Majumdar

Rating: 3.75 stars / 5 stars 

*This post contains affiliate links. If you make purchases after using these links, I will earn a percentage of your purchase without any further cost to you. 

Favorite Quote: “But her suppressed agitation as the children continued to play showered her, moment by moment, who she was. A mother with no generosity, mother to nobody but her own child, her love showing how mother was the opposite of motherly.” Majumdar, Megha. A Guardian and a Thief. Alfred A, Knopf, 2025, pg. 65. 

Review: A Guardian and a Thief follows two intertwined storylines - that of a family about to immigrate to avoid an oppressive government, and that of a son leaving his small town for the big city, hoping too, to save his family. They clash when he witnesses the mother of the family stealing from the shelter where he was staying and where she worked. From then on, events spiraled out of control leading, ultimately, to death.

What to say about this book? The writing is spectacular. There were so many notable quotes. And the overarching plots - escaping impossible living situations - is fascinating, especially when the two storylines are showing two vastly different environments from which escape is necessary. 

At a micro level, though, the part that isn’t working is that readers are asked to suspend their disbelief in pretty significant ways. [SPOILERS AHEAD] A thief stalks a woman. Breaks into her house. Steals her purse that happens to hold the passports she needs to get her family out. Then he somehow ends up moving into their house? And temporarily kidnapping her child? Then people die. That’s a lot for such a short book, and frankly it didn’t always work. 

About that Quote: At the end of this day, this book has two primary, interlaced themes: family and survival. This quote demonstrates the core of what part the plot centers around: a mother so desperate to protect her own child by any means, even to the detriment of others. And that detriment triggers another part of the plot.

Have you read either of these Women’s Prize nominees? (Congrats to The Finest Hotel in Kabul for winning the award for nonfiction!) Share your thoughts below!