My Uncle Napoleon A Novel [Paperback]

The most beloved Iranian novel of the twentieth century

“God forbid, I’ve fallen in love with Layli!” So begins the farce of our narrator’s life, one spent in a large extended Iranian family lorded over by the blustering, paranoid patriarch, Dear Uncle Napoleon. When Uncle Napoleon’s least-favorite nephew falls for his daughter, Layli, family fortunes are reversed, feuds fired up and resolved, and assignations attempted and thwarted.

First published in Iran in the 1970s and adapted into a hugely successful television series, this beloved novel is now “Suggested Reading” in Azar Nafisi’sReading Lolita in Tehran.My Uncle Napoleonis a timeless and universal satire of first love and family intrigue.“A gift both to readers fascinated by other cultures and to lovers of fiction for fiction’s sake.”
–The Washington Post Book World

Readers can gain a more balanced impression of Iran from this novel, which looks at life from the kind of humorous perspective few Westerners may associate with the current regime in that country.”
–The Christian Science Monitor

“A masterpiece of contemporary world fiction.”
–Baltimore Sun

“Howlingly funny . . . [a] tender, salacious and magical Iranian import.”
–Cleveland Plain Dealer

“A giddily uproarious mixture of farce and slapstick.”
–The AtlanticIraj Pezeshkzadwas born in Tehran in 1928 and educated in Iran and then France, where he received his law degree. He served as a judge in the Iranian Judiciary for five years prior to joining the Iranian Foreign Service. He began writing in the early 1950s by translating the works of Voltaire and Molière into Persian and by writing short stories for magazines.

Dick Davisis a translator, a poet, and a scholar of Persian literature whl“I