The Court Painter

Persia, the sixteenth century. Fifteen-year-old Soraya is the apple of her father's eye and shares her father's passion for painting. After his sudden death, to her great dismay she is about to be married off to an old but well to- do man who can save her mother and brothers from poverty. She flees the house and finds shelter with a hospitable family living a few villages away. Soraya makes friends with the daughter, Adileh, who manages to get hold of painting materials for her. Soraya's paintings are so fine that they attract attention in Adileh's father's fabric shop and are sold for large sums of money. When an envoy of shah Ismaïl sees her work, he announces that he would like to invite the artist to come and work as head painter of miniatures. When Soraya is forced to flee again, she decides to leave for the palace in Tabriz, disguised as a man, where an adventurous and difficult life awaits her. In The Court Painter Soraya will not accept the subservient role of women and does everything in her power to realise her dreams. Carolien Omidi studied Dutch literature and has been living in Tehran, Iran, with her Iranian husband and children for seventeen years. She worked there as a journalist and writer. She started a column in the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant and has been a correspondent for the daily Trouw and Radio 1 for many years. In 2003 she wrote the novel The Fire of Persia. In 2009 she also published From Our Correspondent: Posting Tehran. In 2015-2017 she also wrote weekly columns for Trouw newspaper about her life in Tehran.