Novel
My Uncle Napoleon
دایی جان ناپلئون
Iraj Pezeshkzad · 1973
Synopsis
Tehran, in the early forties, under the Allied occupation. On a large estate around a garden live three related families, under the sway of Dai Jan, “dear uncle”, a former junior gendarmerie officer who has boundless admiration for Napoleon, identifies with him and sees the hand of the English behind everything that happens; his valet Mash Qassem shares his terrors. The young narrator falls in love with Leyli, the uncle's daughter; but a quarrel breaks out between the uncle and the boy's father, and everything grows more complicated day by day.
Context
Written in Geneva, where the author was a diplomat, the novel first appeared in instalments in the weekly Ferdowsi, then in volume in Tehran in 1973, and was an immense success. In 1976 Nasser Taghvai made it into a television series, one of the best loved in the country; after the revolution, the novel and the series were banned. Dick Davis translated it into English in 1996, and Sorour Kasmaï into French in 2011.
Who it is for
A big novel, nearly five hundred pages in French. It should be known that the comedy arises from misunderstandings and from a mania for conspiracy, and that the lines are the kind people quote.
Prizes and reception
The most popular comic novel in Persian literature; its lines have passed into everyday speech.