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 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.

Tonight, free thinking is devoted to the German writer Gunter Grass, who's died aged 87.

He was born in Danzig, now the Polish city of Gdansk, and grew up during the Nazi period in Germany.

He was part of the Hitler Youth Movement, and 2006, Graas admitted that he'd been a member

of the Waffen SS.

A prisoner of war until 1946, he trained as a sculptor in Dusseldorf and Berlin on his release,

before achieving fame and notoriety as a writer with the publication in 1959 of his first

novel The Tin Drum. More books followed and his career was crowned with the publication in 1959 of his first novel The Tin Drum.

More books followed and his career was crowned with the Nobel Prize in 1999.

Grass was once considered the conscience of Germany

and his life and work provide a measure of the country's evolution since the Second World War.

To reassess the nature of his achievement and the status of the tindrum as a landmark

of European literature, I'm joined by the East German writer, Oigen Ruger, who recently received

the Alfred Dablin Prize from Guntergras himself, the novelist Lawrence Norfolk, the literary historian,

Karen Lieder and the journalist Oliver Cam. Nguyen, Guntarous, reading there from the Tind drum to the accompaniment of Maurice Jarre's music for Falka Schlendorf's famous film version of the book.

What better way to conjure up Gras's hero, Oscar Mazzarat, who decides to stop growing when he's three and refuses to be parted from his beloved drum.

Oscar's life moves in parallel with the growth of Nazism in Germany.

He's born in the 20s when the Nazi movement is born.

He goes to school in 1933 when the Nazi sees power and is in Danzig when the first shots of the Second World War are fired.

He joins a troop of performing dwarfs, entertaining German troops on the front line,

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