Iran's Iraj Pezeshkzad, who wrote 'My Uncle Napoleon,' dies
ABC News
An Iranian author whose bestselling comic novel, “My Uncle Napoleon,” lampooned Persian culture’s self-aggrandizing and paranoid behavior as the country entered the modern era, has died
TEHRAN, Iran -- Iraj Pezeshkzad, an Iranian author whose bestselling comic novel, “My Uncle Napoleon,” lampooned Persian culture's self-aggrandizing and paranoid behavior as the country entered the modern era, has died. He was 94.
The travails of Uncle Napoleon, whose delusions have him seeing Britain's hand in the troubles plaguing his waning days of his aristocratic family during World War II, became one of the most-beloved television serials ever in Iran when it aired in 1976.
The fervor of the 1979 Islamic Revolution saw the book banned and the series never aired again on Iranian state television. Pezeshkzad himself would ultimately land in Los Angeles, part of an emigre society of Iranians still there that see the California city jokingly referred to as “Tehrangeles” even today.
Pezeshkzad's words and turns of phrase from the novel still litter Iranian culture today, including raunchy references to “San Francisco” as an innuendo for sexual liaisons. The same goes for passages about the power of love, as described in one scene by Uncle Napoleon's long-suffering servant, Mash Ghasem.
