Half the World

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? Corri van de Stege a Dutch national lived, studied and worked in London for eight years, married her Iranian boyfriend and moved with him to Isfahan early in 1977.

Initially suffering from homesickness for London she adapts and makes new friends amongst the community of ‘foreign wives’ and becomes a teacher at the British Council. But then she finds herself in the middle of a revolution in an alien country with her husband and baby son, without internet, social media or even a telephone in her house, and where television and radio broadcasts are censored so you never know what is true and what is gossip.

The author evokes the stark contrast between the everyday life on the campus and the escalation of violence both across the country and in Isfahan, the town where she lives. She worries about the increasing demonstrations of hatred against foreigners, in particular Americans, and the English language. You feel the tension grow between friends and colleagues who will have to decide whether they can live in an Islamic Republic, their unease aggravated by increasing uncertainty about what will happen to the American hostages held in Tehran.

HALF THE WORLD is a gripping and unique account by a foreigner living through the turbulence of revolution and the emergence of the Islamic Republic of Iran