The Finest Hotel in Kabul

Sporting a rather grey, drab looking and bleak external fascia, reflecting the 1960s trend towards brutalist non-descript box-like architectural structures, and situated at a high altitude on a hill overlooking the city of Kabul, is what was known in its heyday during the late 1960s and 1970s as the finest hotel in Kabul – The Intercontinental Kabul, formerly part of the global Intercontinental chain of hotels. It is this hotel, ‘the Intercon,’ that is almost personified throughout this intriguing tale by assuming a central role as the prime interlocutor of the text around which the lives and work of its staff revolve. In tandem, is the ensuing chaos and added toxicity resulting from ongoing Afghan conflicts fuelled by the state’s geopolitical positioning, painful recent history, and the external input of catastrophic globalised meddling by the world’s major players.