Remembering Iraj Pezeshkzad (1928-2022)

We are deeply saddened by the loss of Mr. Iraj Pezeshkzad, Iran's legendary satirist, essayist, diplomat, and patriot. 

Iraj Pezeshkzad was born in Tehran in 1928, and educated in Iran and France where he received his degree in law. He served as a judge in the Iranian Judiciary for five years prior to joining the Iranian Foreign Service. He began writing in the early 1950s by translating the works of Voltaire and Molière into Persian and by writing short stories for magazines. His novels include Haji Mam-ja'far in Paris, and Mashalah Khan in the Court of Haroun al-Rashid.

His most famous work, My Uncle Napoleon, was published in 1973 and earned him national acclaim and was lauded by Iranian and international critics alike as a cultural phenomenon. It is a social satire and a masterpiece of contemporary Persian literature. The story is set in a garden in Tehran in the early 1940s at the onset of the Second World War, where three families live under the tyranny of a paranoid patriarch nicknamed, "Dear Uncle Napoleon".

Mr. Pezeshkzad received the 7th Bita Prize for Persian Arts and we were honored to celebrate his life and work at Stanford University in 2014. He will be deeply missed and our thoughts are with his family and friends. 

AP News: Iran's Pezeshkzad, who wrote "My Uncle Napoleon," dies (January 14, 2022)

NY Times: Iraj Pezeshkzad, Author of Classic Iranian Novel, Dies at 94 (February 23, 2022)