Khuzestand

Let us imagine we are in the process of creating a much-needed reading list for experts and analysts on Iran. I would put My Uncle Napoleon in a cherished place very near the top. One reason for this choice is that it is a great read. More pragmatically, I believe this novel provides its readers - in a delightful and deliciously politically incorrect manner - with many important insights into Iran, its culture and traditions, its present conflicts and past history, as well as its paradoxical relation to the west.

My Uncle Napoleon is in many ways a refutation of the grim and hysterical images of Iran that have dominated the western world for almost three decades. On so many different levels this novel represents Iran's confiscated and muted voices, revealing a culture filled with a deep sense of irony and humour, as well as sensuality and tenderness. The very structure of the novel, its use of farce, and its frank and entertaining investigation of love and eroticism go against any fundamentalist or puritanical doctrine, be it Islamic or otherwise.

The novel is firmly rooted in an important Iranian literary tradition, one that traces its roots back at least 700 years ago to the satiric poetry of Obeyd Zakani. Since the beginning of the 20th century some of the best Iranian writers and poets have used satire and farce to articulate the dilemmas of modern Iran, among them Sadegh Hedayat, Hossein Moghadam, Dehkhoda, Iraj Mirza.

My Uncle Napoleon is the story of a pathetic and pathological man who, because of his failure in real life, turns himself into a Napoleon in his fantasies and becomes convinced of a British plot to destroy him. It gripped the Iranian imagination to such an extent that since its publication in 1973 it has sold millions of copies and has been turned into perhaps the most popular television series in the history of modern Iran. Banned by the censors of the Islamic Republic in 1979, both the book and television serial have thrived underground.

Part of this phenomenal success is because, like all good works of fiction, My Uncle Napoleon is rooted in the reality it fictionalises. It reveals an essential truth about life in contemporary Iran. In a speech at the University of California at Los Angeles, Pezeshkzad traced the origins of Uncle Napoleon's character to his own childhood, when, listening to grown-ups, he was baffled by the way they indiscriminately labelled most politicians "British lackeys". This obsession was so pervasive that some Iranians even claimed Hitler was a British stooge and Germany's bombing of London a nefarious plot hatched by British Intelligence. Similar sinister musings were spouted recently when, after the bombings in London last July, the powerful Iranian cleric Ahmad Janati, chair of the Council of Guardians of the Revolution, claimed in a nationally broadcast sermon that "the British government itself created this situation". Janati also blamed the Americans for the attacks on September 11 2001.

After the publication of My Uncle Napoleon many, including the late prime minister Amir Abbass Hoveyda -who, in a macabre twist of fate, was accused of being an imperialist stooge, among other charges, and was murdered by the Islamic regime - were convinced that Dear Uncle Napoleon was based on a family member.

Although the book is not political, it is politically subversive, targeting a certain mentality and attitude. Its protagonist is a small-minded and incompetent personality who blames his failures and his own insignificance on an all-powerful entity, thereby making himself significant and indispensable. Uncle Napoleonites can be found anywhere in the world and among the different strata of any society. In Iran, for example, as Pezeshkzad has mentioned elsewhere, this attitude is not limited to "common" people but is in fact more prevalent among the so-called political and intellectual elite.

In My Uncle Napoleon, as in another and very different Iranian masterpiece, The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat, the tension between reality and fiction is an integral part of the story's plot. The conflict between what exists and what is imagined to exist shapes the characters and their relations. The plot's tragicomic resolution depends on the way this tension is resolved. But the absurdities that cause us to laugh at a ludicrous fictional character can become sources of great suffering when practised in real life. Pezeshkzad's Dear Uncle Napoleon can only exercise his petty tyrannies within his own household, yet he also represents far grimmer dictators with much greater power to harm.

Sometimes it seemed to me when I still lived in Iran that My Uncle Napoleon predicted and articulated in farcical terms the mindset ruling over the Islamic Republic. Like all totalitarian systems, the Iranian government feeds and grows on paranoia. To justify its rule the regime had to replace reality with its own mythologies. The Islamic regime based its absurd justice on Uncle Napoleonic logic, destroying the lives of millions of Iranians through its laws, jailing and torturing and killing all imagined enemies and accusing them of being agents of the Great Satan, namely America and its allies. If Uncle Napoleon felt that the delay in his nephew's train was a British plot, the guardians of morality in Iran saw a woman's lipstick or a man's tie as props/accessories in an imperialist plot to destroy Islam.

The story of My Uncle Napoleon takes place in a vast garden lodging three different households: that of our hero, his sister, and his younger brother, who is called "the colonel", although he retired from the military with a far lower rank. An astonishing array of characters representing various strata of society - police investigators, government officials, housewives, a medical doctor, a butcher, a sycophantic preacher, servants, a shoeshine man, and an Indian or two - all pass through the garden that becomes the set for many conflicts, machinations, and humorous entanglements.

Inside the garden, life is run according to hierarchical and familial codes and regulations. In all three households decisions are made through family councils, daughters marry with their fathers' consent. Preservation of "family honour" - in this case as much a sham as our Napoleon - is of prime importance, demanding elaborate lies and deceptions. Over this unruly lot Dear Uncle Napoleon rules with an almost iron hand, shaping all their decisions and moves.

Within such a context characters live without a sense of accountability or individual responsibility. Their individuality is sacrificed to the common good, and all their efforts are directed at diverting the ill effects of Dear Uncle's malady. To lie is a way of life, and it is justified because telling the truth has unpleasant and sometimes fatal consequences. Thus a community is created based on illusions and fantasies. Yet we are touched by these deeply flawed characters, liking them even as we laugh at them. This is because of the writer's compassion, especially in regard to Dear Uncle Napoleon, who emerges as tyrannical and absurd but also vulnerable and almost tragic.

Dear Uncle Napoleon and his paranoia rule the garden. But in such a world invisible powers can play an even more potent role than visible ones. There are no British characters, except for the comely wife of an Indian brigadier. It is interesting how Pezeshkzad defines the foreign presence through its absence and through the anxious fantasies of his characters. There are references to three western countries in the book. The Americans are treated lightly: this was a time when they still had not won the title of the Great Satan. They are immortalised in the words of Uncle Asadollah, the good-natured Don Juan, for whom "going to San Francisco" is a euphemism for having sex. Throughout the novel Uncle Asadollah is seen to be either going to San Francisco or sometimes to Los Angeles, or encouraging others to do so. As for the main villains, the British, suffice it to say that while even the lowliest citizens of that empire are not in the least aware of, or interested in, the shenanigans of our Uncle Napoleon and his household, these in return cannot eat or sleep without thinking of the British. The fact that our anti-hero identifies with a French emperor and not with the many national heroes of his own country points to his self-alienation.

What triumphs over this corrupt and decadent society, what is "real" and authentic, is the narrator's account of falling in love aged 13 with his uncle's daughter Layli. This love story is a humorous version of the many Romeo-and-Juliet-style love affairs in Persian literature, such as Vamegh and Azra, Viss and Ramin, Shirin and Frahad.

The narrator's obsessive passion for Layli fuels his investigations into the actions of other family members. To gain a few stolen moments with his love, or to prevent her from marrying a hated cousin, he has to eavesdrop, plan and conspire, thus becoming intimately involved in everyone else's stories. From the very first page, love becomes its own subject of investigation. Is he in love? What is love? Why is he feeling so tormented? Is it worth it? And what is the difference between what he feels and what the roguish Uncle Asadollah prescribes for almost all maladies, namely sex? Thus Uncle Napoleon's obsession runs parallel to the narrator's own obsession, but while one is blind and turns away from the world, the other opens the eyes of the 13-year-old boy and makes him see outside the narrow world of his garden.

The garden in more ways than one becomes a microcosm of modern Iranian society, a society in the grip of a severe identity crisis. On a larger scale the novel addresses the consequences of the dilemma faced by Iranian society from the middle of the 19th century, when Iran was in a period of transition and on the brink of modern times. This period, coinciding with the rule of the Qhajar kings, was marked by cultural, political, social and economic crises, created by inept and corrupt despots and equally reactionary religious leaders.

Although My Uncle Napoleon is highly critical of the society it depicts, it is also the best testament to the complexity, vitality, and flexibility of Iranian culture and society. Ultimately, the novel turns the tables against the reality it portrays. It is a timely reminder that Persians, like the British, can overcome their own shortcomings and failures through their works of imagination with humour and self-deprecation. The best way to defeat the Uncle Napoleon mentality is to acknowledge it and to recreate it through fiction.

Perhaps this is a good time to be reminded of the urgent need to form a conspiracy of sorts among the lovers of books in England and America, Iran, and the world over. Let the narrow mindsets tremble and fear at the possibility of such a movement.

· Azar Nafisi is the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran. This is an edited introduction to a new edition of Iraj Pezeshkzad's My Uncle Napoleon published as a Modern Library Classics paperback (Random House).