The story of a family in Tehran in the 1940s under the tyranny of a paranoid patriarch and of the narrator's love for his cousin in the midst of numerous manipulative family members. A satire on Iranian society in the 1940s featuring an eccentric uncle, a snob with an invented heroic past who worships Napoleon, Hitler and hates the English. It is narrated by his nephew, who is in love with his daughter. The novel was made into a TV series in Iran in 1976.