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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Tonight on nightwaves, an irresistible mix of patronage, power, greed and sex.

I'll be discussing the tangled personal and political life of Frassoire Mitterrand

and exploring the shuttered world of courtesans in pre-communist China with the best-selling author Amy Tan.

And what does this make you think of?

I'm going to. Well, possibly not fragile floral themes, but flowers reinterpreted are at the heart of a new dance work by the choreographer Shobiner Jeyer Singh, with music by Gabriel Prokofiev,

we'll be talking to showrunner later on.

But we start tonight with Amy Tan,

whose latest work is set in China's upmarket brothels in the tumultuous first decades of the 20th century.

The Joylock Club gained her readers across the globe,

following the romantic and financial fortunes

of Chinese American families in post-war America. Now her new novel, The Valley of Amazement,

is set among Shanghai's finest courtesans, plying their trade as the country moves into its

first uncertain period as a republic beset by warlords and the Japanese threat.

It's a setting for a story of female sacrifice and a clash of cultures,

but also a quest for love of the non-commercial kind.

When I met Amy Tan, I started by asking her to give us a flavour of the story,

and she chose the chapter, etiquette for beauties of the boudoir,

...