Iraj Pezeshkzad—1928–2022
He has more to teach about Iran than anybody in history. His greatest work is a masterpiece about Iran but also about tyranny and the egotistical mind of a conspiracy theorist.
In the 1960s, my Dad had to travel to Tehran for boarding school. My grandfather’s friend was driving to the capital city, and he offered to take my Dad with him. There was a second gentleman in the car. During the ride, he talked about a “masterpiece” he was writing. My Dad, still a kid, didn’t realize that he was in the presence of Iran’s greatest author.
Iraj Pezeshkzad was born in 1928 to a physician father and a nobility mother. He studied law in France, as it was custom for the children of wealthy intellectuals, and returned to Iran and became an author.
Pezeshkzad’s masterpiece was Mashallah Khan At Harun al-Rashid’s Court. Harun al-Rashid’s reign is often regarded as the golden age of Islam, but Pezeshkzad cleverly ridicules the era, as well as Harun al-Rashid himself, and thus challenges the historical narratives of Islam and the grandeur of the old days. A humorist and satirist, he charmed and disarmed his audience by making them laugh, allowing them to look past their biases and orthodoxies so they could appreciate his message.
But Mashallah Khan was not the masterpiece Pezeshkzad was talking about during the ride to Tehran. In fact, it is not even what he is remembered by. None of his many short and long writings, however great, are.
My Uncle Napoleon is indisputably the greatest work of fiction written in Farsi, which later was turned into a TV miniseries. Almost half a century later, the miniseries, just like the book, remains the best work of motion picture ever produced in Farsi. The story occurs in a large piece of land in Tehran belonging to an extended family with several houses for each family that lives in it, all siblings. It is written in first-person narrative by a teenager who falls in love with his cousin who reciprocates his feelings. But it is more than a teenage love. It captures the traditional family dynamics in Iran, which remain true today, with all the formalities and informalities, rivalries disguised in respect, and, most importantly, begrudging, resentful respect for the authority of the eldest sibling.
The eldest authority is Uncle Napoleon, the central character of the book. Uncle Napoleon—we never know his name—is at the same time a tyrant and a victim. He rules the family with an iron fist. His subjects show respect for his authority and hate him for it. The storyteller’s father, Uncle Napoleon’s brother-in-law, is resented by Uncle Napoleon for being a commoner who married Uncle Napoleon’s aristocratic sister. The feeling is mutual. He hates Uncle Napoleon’s tyranny. At times, he manipulates him by singing his praises, and, at times, he openly rebels and cuts off relations with him. He’s a true common Iranian rebelling against the elite.
But Uncle Napoleon is also the victim. He suffers from deep paranoia and deep narcissistic personality disorder. A former low-level officer in Persian Cossack Brigades who fought a few minor battles but exaggerates them to great wars against the Brits and believes himself to be the modern-day heir to his hero, Napoleon. Throughout the entire story, which happens during World War II, he’s awaiting the Brits to arrive and arrest him for all the defeats he had imposed on them.
Uncle Napoleon’s tyranny is a result of his paranoia, itself a result of his narcissistic personality disorder. He develops conspiracy theories about British plots against him and uses those as a justification to tighten his control over the family. When some members of the family, usually the storyteller’s father, rebel by secretly sabotaging him, he sees those as evidence that his conspiracy theories are, in fact, true. He’s a tyrant victim of his own tyranny.
Yet, Pezeshkzad manages in making this bleak story so enjoyable with his humor throughout the book. It’s impossible to pass a page without laughter, often hysterical. Uncle Assadollah, the storyteller’s mentor, a jokester, cynical, well-educated womanizer who takes pleasure in ridiculing the aristocracy he’s a product of. Uncle Napoleon’s younger brother is a retired colonel who’s always navigating the politics of the family to serve himself by being what his audience wants him to be at any given time, always loyal and respectful to his elder brother, but never sincerely. He’s a petty, little man, but the least miserable of all the characters because of that. There are also characters from outside the family, including Mash Qassem, Uncle Napoleon’s loyal servant, who himself shares Uncle Napoleon’s disorders and self-aggrandizes himself as the right-hand man to Napoleon’s heir and the number 2 on Great Britain’s most wanted list above Adolf Hitler.
In an interview toward the end of his life, Pezeshkzad revealed that, despite the suspicions, the story is not a memoir, but the characters are inspired by the people he met in life. Uncle Napoleon, specifically, is inspired by Pezeshkzad’s father who was a deeply paranoid man.
When people ask me how best they could understand Iran, I tell them that they must read My Uncle Napoleon. It tells you about how Iranian tyrants have always acted, and still do even though the book predates the Islamic Republic. Ali Khamenei’s every other word during a speech is “the enemy.” He is as paranoid about American plots to overthrow him as Uncle Napoleon was about the Brits. To be fair, he’s a much more important person to the U.S. interest than Uncle Napoleon to the Brits, but the excessive self-aggrandizement nevertheless is persistent, as was true of King Mohammadreza Pahlavi. And when foreign diplomats and statesmen and stateswomen engage with their Iranian counterparts, they should keep in mind such paranoia that runs through the ranks of the regime from Khamenei himself through the bottom, understanding that reason cannot easily override this paranoia.
But also, this is an important book to read to understand the nature of tyranny and tyrant. Furthermore, and especially with conspiracy theories on the rise in the free world, it is a terrific lesson in understanding the ego of a conspiracy theorist. The story has a lot of lessons for anybody interested in Iran, but it has other lessons which transcend time and geography. (By the way, the book has been translated into several languages, including English by the author himself, as well as French, Hebrew, and Russian.)
No Iranian has simply watched and read My Uncle Napoleon. Everybody has lost count of the number of times they have watched and read the miniseries and the book because of their humor but also the subtle touch on life in Iran.
When Pezeshkzad’s death was announced earlier this week, every Iranian thought immediately of his immortal novel, which he knew about its greatness before it sold a single copy. More than a century ago, before it had been finished, he had told my Dad that his novel would forever be remembered. His legacy will forever be a blessing!
Sorry for the month-long absence. I just started a new job and moved back to Washington, D.C. The move and settling in the new job took a toll on me, but now I’m finally settled, and I’ll be back in your inboxes as frequently as before.
Thank you, Shay, for a wonderful remembrance/book review/geopolitical analysis. What I found in my friendships with those from Iran, Iraq, Jordan - who had never left their home country - the conspiracy theories are just below the surface. Very helpful to know when navigating culture. Well done!
❤️❤️❤️🇮🇷