Canadian journalist Lyse Doucet has won the 2026 U.K. Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction for her social history The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan.

The winners of the prizes were announced at an event in London on June 11. American  novelist Virginia Evans was named the winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction for her novel The Correspondent.

Doucet, who is the chief international correspondent and senior presenter for the BBC, was one of six writers shortlisted for the nonfiction prize.

The Finest Hotel in Kabul, published in Canada by Allen Lane and by Hutchinson Heinemann in the U.K., is Doucet’s first book. It explores the recent history of Afghanistan through the story of Kabul’s first luxury hotel – opened in 1969 – which Doucet was familiar with from her times reporting from Afghanistan, starting with her coverage of the Soviet withdrawal from the country in 1988.

Doucet was the lone Canadian writer shortlisted for this year’s prize. The book – her first – was also longlisted for the 2025 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.

This is the second time that a Canadian writer has won the nonfiction prize. Naomi Klein won the inaugural prize in 2024 for Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World.

The £30,000 ($55,438 CAD) Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction was established by the Women’s Prize Trust in 2023 to honour exceptional nonfiction written by women. Books written by women and published in English in the U.K. are eligible. The Women’s Prize for Fiction, originally known as the Orange Prize for Fiction, has been awarded since 1996.