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.

Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.

On tonight's program in a moment,

a passionate Howard Jacobson on Kafka, D.H. Lawrence, what it tells us about Europe,

that Hitler is still invoked by those who hate Israel. And later, an interview with Francis

at the end of history for Kokoyama, who wants to believe that liberal democracy will be the

world's fate, but in his new book,

he fears for its health. But first, Howard Jacobson's new book has shortlisted novel, Jay. It's set

somewhere between Cornwall and nowhere. Everyone seems to have Jewish names, but the word Jew is never used. People are

ruthlessly polite to one another because of something that happened, if it happened. At the heart

of Jay is a love story between Cave and Cohen and Aileen Solomons, who seem in some

Kafkaesque way to be monitored and even brought together by forces beyond their own desire.

Clearly something terrifying has happened, but no one either knows or will say what it is.

The World of Jays both sanitised, one of those monitoring Kavan is in the Department of Benign Visual Arts, as well as predatory.

People use, abuse one another. There are murders.

It's a novel that makes for uncomfortable reading, set as it seems to be in the future

where some group or other seems to have been cleansed.

When I met Howard Jacobson earlier, I said I'd found the book very odd.

Something like Daphne Dumorrier meets ethnic cleansing.

How long have I got to think about?

...