Mi tío Napoleón

Set in Tehran in the early 1940s, My Uncle Napoleon is the portrait of a family living under the grotesque tyranny of a quirky patriarch who idolizes Napoleon Bonaparte. When love arises between the young narrator and his cousin Layli, daughter of Uncle Napoleon, a hilarious maze of intrigues and machinations is set in motion to prevent them from being together. In the garden shared by the family homes, conspiracies break out, adulteries more or less tolerated, little lies are told and great secrets are hidden. A hilarious novel, tenderly and wisely narrated by Pezeshkzad. My Uncle Napoleon is considered a masterpiece of modern Iranian literature. Upon its publication, it became a sales phenomenon. Currently, its protagonists are icons in their country as for the Spanish reader they may be Don Quixote or Sancho Panza, and some of the most common expressions of the characters have passed into colloquial Farsi. The book has been banned in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution.