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, it's 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 at 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.

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Welcome to free thinking. Radio Three's Festival of Ideas here at the Sage Gateshead.

My guest today, Amos Oz, was born in Jerusalem in 1939, and has lived not only through the founding of Israel,

but through the almost terminally intractable and often unforgiving dispute between the

Palestinians and the state of Israel. He's been called the national conscience of Israel, perhaps sometimes a controversial conscience.

As long ago as 1967, he called for a two-state solution to the conflict and was a founder of peace now.

But he's also author of over 30 novels, many essays, as well as one of the great

post-world memoirs, a tale of love and darkness about childhood, the birth of Israel, and the

suicide of his mother. His family was Zionist immigrants into Jerusalem, and Amosos went on to live in a kubbutz fight in two wars.

He was in a tank unit during the 1967, six days war, and he's marinated himself in the life of his country.

Even his novels show that loyalty.

He once said that a translation of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, helped me to write about what was around me. He just published a brace of essays,

one entitled Between Right and Right, a reference to both Israel and the Palestinians, and another

called How to Cure a Fanatic. Both were originally lectures and were given in Germany in 2002

and are now published in English. They go deep into the womb that is the Palestine in Israel conflict, as unafraid to mock

the sentimentalities of the European left, as opposed the fanatic gene in all of us.

That's his phrase.

It's not surprising that Amos is often cited as one of the most important public intellectuals in the world.

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