My Uncle Napoleon - Main Characters

Main Characters

• Dear Uncle Napoleon (Daï Jan Napoleon): The patriarch of the family. Dear Uncle is a paranoid, imaginative and delusional character who believes he was involved in many wars against the English army and their "lackeys". The title Uncle Napoleon is sarcastically given to him by his nieces and nephews due to his admiration and obsession with the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
• Mash Qasem: Dear Uncle's faithful servant and butler from a small town, Ghiasabad near Qom. Strongly devoted to Dear Uncle, his claim to fame is to have been involved in battles against the British Army alongside Dear Uncle, the most important of which are the Battle of Mamasani and the Battle of Kazeroun. Overly proud of his native town Ghiaasabad and constantly telling stories of his hometown, he has a tendency to give himself away when hiding the truth by starting his sentences with "why should I lie? To the grave it's ah... ah...ah". Mash Qasem becomes the messenger between the narrator and Layli at times when the two cannot meet, partly as a favour to the narrator and partly to satisfy his own unbounded inquisitiveness.
• The Narrator/Saeed: The narrator of the story and Dear Uncle's nephew. The narrator, who remains nameless and rather arcane in the novel despite being the central figure around whom the story develops, falls in love with Dear Uncle's daughter Layli, one a hot summer day on 13 August at quarter to three in the afternoon.
• Agha Joon: The narrator's father, a pharmacist who is the brother-in-law of Dear Uncle. After years of being ridiculed by Dear Uncle for not belonging to an aristocratic family, he takes his revenge by strengthening Dear Uncle's belief that the English are after him.
• Asadollah Mirza: An official in the Foreign Ministry and half brother (by his father's gardener's daughter) of Shams Ali Mirza. A playboy, Asadollah Mirza doesn't spare any opportunity to seduce the opposite sex with his charm and charisma, irrespective of the subject matter's marital/social status. He was once happily married and in love with a woman until she cheated on him and left him. The "Mirza" of his and his brother's name is an honorific indicating a distant relation to the Qajar royal family which is why he is referred to as "Shazdeh" meaning prince. He becomes a close friend of the narrator during the course of the novel, often trying to help him in his efforts to reach his love.