Iraj Pezeshkzad wrote the popular comic Iranian novel "Dai Jan Napoleon" in the early 1970s. The TV serial which was made from the novel in the 1970s is still enjoyed today in Iran (despite a ban on the book and series from the Islamic Republic). A good, readable English translation ("My Uncle Napoleon") by Dick Davis is available from Mage Publishers. The novel provides an interesting insight into Tehrani traditional life.
The Publishers describe the novel thus:
"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 the British) are responsible for events that occur in Iran. But most of all it is a very enjoyable, often side-splitting read that you wish did not have to end. First published in Iran in the early 1970s, the novel became an all-time best-seller. In 1976 it was turned into a television series and immediately captured the imagination of the whole nation - its story became a cultural reference point and its characters national icon! Dick Davis' superb English translation has not only captured the uproarious humor of the original but has also caught the delicate, underlying vibrancy of the Persian."
IrajPezeshkzad (whose name was scribbled in small fl letters across the top of the book) was one of the reasons I learned to appreciate my mother tongue.
Pezeshkzad's particular fondness for the character is based on Mash Qasem's wisdom, which the author emphasized has nothing to do with knowledge or education which the character lacks.
Pezeshkzad's touching summary of his task as a writer: that even though he may touch on tragic tones and induce tears in his readers' eyes, he will never allow those tears to fall; he will always prevent the tear by injecting a dose of laughter when least expected.
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