Iraj Pezeshkzad, celebrated Iranian satirist and author of ‘My Uncle Napoleon,’ dies

Iraj Pezeshkzad, an Iranian writer whose satirical 1973 novel “My Uncle Napoleon,” affectionately skewering the foibles of his countrymen and -women in the decades before the Islamic Revolution, became a phenomenally popular work of modern Persian literature, died Jan. 12 in Santa Monica, Calif. He was believed to be 95.

The cause was a stroke, said his son, Bahman Pezeshkzad. Mr. Pezeshkzad had lived in exile in France since shortly after the 1979 revolution that overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and installed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as supreme religious leader of Iran. Mr. Pezeshkzad was visiting family members in the United States when the coronavirus pandemic began and had remained in the country ever since.