Author(s): Iraj Pezeshkzad (tr from Persian Dick Davis)

Classic Fiction

"My Uncle Napoleon" is the most beloved Iranian novel of the twentieth century. Set in a garden in Tehran in the early 1940s, where three families live under the tyranny of a paranoid patriarch, My Uncle Napoleon is a rich comic and brilliantly on-target- send-up of Iranian society. The novel is, at its core, a love story. But the young narrator's delicate and pure love for his cousin Layli is constantly jeopardized by an unforgettable cast of family members and the hilarious mayhem of their intrigues and machinations. It is also a social satire, a lampooning of the widespread Iranian belief that foreigners (particularly, and with some historical justification, the British) are responsible for events that occur in Iran. But most of all it is a very enjoyable, often sidesplitting read that you wish did not have to end. First published in Iran 1973; this translation 1996.