MixedThe Wall Street JournalMs. Doucet’s affection for the country is unmistakable. But her conceit that the Inter-Con’s trajectory can constitute, as the book’s subtitle asserts, \'a people’s history of Afghanistan,\' is rickety at best. ... Ms. Doucet’s ambition to tell Afghanistan’s story is frustrated by her choice to make the hotel the book’s central character ... It doesn’t help that Ms. Doucet’s prose, replete with stock expressions, is tiresomely banal ... As I closed the book—the distillation of almost 40 years of its author’s engagement with Afghanistan and its pre-eminent players—I realized I had yet read another work that, rather than enhancing our understanding of Afghanistan, demonstrates why we continue to fail to understand it.
Elizabeth Flock
PanThe Washington PostA book that would have merited wide readership as a narrative of three marriages struggles to capture the nuances of a country in transition. Flock strives to meet the challenge by layering in historical detail. But facts sometimes get the better of her ... Flock doesn’t claim to speak for all marriages; yet her book functions as a stealthy argument for the wisdom of arranged matches, even if not all end in harmony ... arranged marriage, a practice that, for all its outward refinements, remains rooted in the denial of choice and autonomy, especially for women.
