Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.

Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.

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Hello. If I were to be the narrator in a novel about my own life, I'd probably begin with an observation like this.

Rolling out of my yurt today and trudging through a rainy hay on why, it slowly dawned on me that I had absolutely no idea how to introduce this radio program. Luckily for you,

writers Javier Circas and Juan Gabriel Vasquez make a much better job of sharing their own work. Their new

novels engage in a form of autobiographical

fiction, novels in which they themselves feature as characters. Javier Circus plays himself

as he explores the scandal around the Spanish Civil War hero, and Juan Gabil Vazquez plays,

well, one Gabriel Vasquez, as he investigates the assassination

of a real-life Colombian politician. Elif Shafak doesn't appear in her novels, but Istanbul

often does, and Istanbul, she says, is in her soul. All three of our guests today write about

the places from which they come. But how do novelists

write their nations? And can a writer love their country and criticize it too? Let me introduce

...