Most of the plot occurs in the narrator's home, a huge early 20th-century-style Iranian mansion in which three wealthy families live under the tyranny of a paranoid patriarch, Uncle.

The story's narrator (nameless in the novel but called Saeed in the TV series) is a high school student in love with his cousin Layli, Dear Uncle's daughter.

A multitude of supporting characters, including police investigators, government officials, Indians, housewives, a medical doctor, a butcher, a sycophantic preacher, servants, and a shoeshine man also appear throughout the development of the story.

Loosely based on the author's real life experiences and his love for the daughter of a wealthy aristocrat, My Uncle Napoleon story instantly became a cultural reference point and its characters national icons of the '70s.

[citation needed] Due to its popularity, reruns of the series were frequent in the National Iranian Radio and Television until the Islamic revolution of 1979.