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, just after Africa writes,

the Royal African Society's annual literature festival and the award of the Kane Prize for African Writing, we look at politics and writers in Kenya.

Last week, there were political demonstrations in the capital against a government accused of indifference to terror attacks, claimed by Islamist militant groom al-Shabaab.

More generally, arguments over corruption, political descent and ethnic tensions are all

part of the warp and woof of life in contemporary Kenya.

But so is the strength of the country's literature, which stretches all the way from great

elder statesmen,

such as to Ngugi Wathiungo to younger writers such as Billy Cahora, with me in the studio.

He's managing editor of Kwani and author of The Gorilla's Apprentice.

Quani means so what, and Billy joins us fresh from hospital where he's got a terrible strap around his body to support an arm that he may well have broken.

So, Billy, thank you very much for being with us.

But before I talked to him, the novelist and essayist Ungugiwa Thiongo.

One of the sessions at last week's Africa Rights Festival marked the 25th anniversary of the translation into English of his novel, Matigari.

A moral fable in which Matigari, a freedom fighter, emerges from the forest in the political dawn of post-independence Kenya.

I spoke to Ngugi four years ago, just after he'd published his memoir, Dreams in

the Time of War, a book about growing up in Kenya, a year before the outbreak of the Second World

War. I hear my mother's voice. Is it the best you can do?

I say to her with all my heart,

...