Out now: Half the World

 PUBLISHED

I am so very happy to let you know that my book   Half   the World is now available from Amazon. Other versions will become available in due course: Kobo, Nook and paperback format also. They’ve been submitted and are in preparation.

 

It is available from (click on the link):

at   Amazon Europe (Amazon.co.uk)

at    Amazon.com (America

 

 

What was it like to live in Isfahan as the foreign wife of an Iranian University professor in the run up to and during the revolution of 1979, when the Shah was overthrown and Khomeini created the Islamic Republic of Iran?

A Dutch national who lived, studied and worked in London for eight years, I married my Iranian boyfriend and moved with him to Isfahan early in 1977.

Initially suffering from homesickness for London I adapt and make new friends amongst the community of ‘foreign wives’, American, English, Belgian, German and Iranian and become a teacher at the British Council. But then I find myself in the middle of a revolution in an alien country with my husband and baby son, without the use of social media or even a telephone in our house, and where television and radio broadcasts are censored so you never know what is true and what is gossip.

“The author evokes the amazing contrast between the everyday life on the campus and the escalation of violence across the country and the town she lives in. She worries about the increasing demonstrations of hatred of foreigners, in particular Americans, and of the English language, and you feel the tensions grow between friends and colleagues who will have to decide whether they can live in an Islamic Republic and with the increasing uncertainty about what will happen to the American hostages held in Tehran.”

Just to give you a bit more background to the story, here are some additional photos from that time in Iran (once you’ve read the book you will recognise the descriptions):

Caspian Sea

View from the flat across campus and Isfahan 1977

Playing volleyball on campus before and during the revolution

View from the Ali Qapu Palace in Isfahan

Caspian Sea Summer 1978

The tile from the Masjid-e-Shah 1977 (see book)

 

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