Alexander McCall Smith
The Internationally Beloved Bestselling Author
Alexander McCall Smith has written more than 80 books, including specialist academic titles, short story collections, and a number of immensely popular children's books. But he is best known for his internationally acclaimed No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, which rapidly rose to the top of bestseller lists throughout the world. The fifth novel in the series, The Full Cupboard of Life, received the Saga Award for Wit in the UK. The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party (March 2011) is the twelfth book in the series, which has now been translated into 45 languages and has sold over 20 million copies worldwide.The first episode of a film adaptation, directed by Anthony Minghella, and produced by the Weinstein Company, premiered on HBO in March 2009.
A self confessed serial novelist, McCall Smith is the author of several other series including one beginning with The Sunday Philosophy Club, about a female sleuth named Isabel Dalhousie, which appeared in 2004 and immediately leapt onto national bestseller lists. The seventh Dalhousie mystery, The Charming Quirks of Others, was published in October 2011, and the eighth book in the series, The Forgotten Affairs of Youth, will be published in December 2011. Another of McCall Smith's serial novels, 44 Scotland Street, was published in book form to great acclaim in 2005, followed by Espresso Tales, Love Over Scotland, The World According to Bertie and The Unbareable Lightness of Scones. The next book in the series, The Importance of Being Seven, will be published in June 2012. Corduroy Mansions, a serial novel depicting the lives of the inhabitants of a large Pimlico house, was published and podcasted by the UK's Daily Telegraph, and is now published as a book (July 2010). The most recent book in the Corduroy Mansion series, The Dog Who Came in from the Cold, was published in the US in June 2011. In addition, McCall Smith's delightful German professor series, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances were published in the US in January 2005.
He is also the author of children's books, including the Akimbo series, about a boy in Africa, the Harriet Bean books, the Max & Maddy series, and The Perfect Hamburger and other Delicious Stories. His newest children's book, The Great Cake Mystery: Precious Ramotswe's Very First Case, based on the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, will be published January 2012.
Pantheon has published Alexander McCall Smith's collection of African folktales, The Girl Who Married a Lion. McCall Smith is also the author of Dream Angus: The Celtic God of Dreams, a contemporary reworking of a beloved Celtic myth, and Heavenly Date & Other Flirtations, a collection of short stories examining the mysteries of dating and courtship.
McCall Smith was born in Rhodesia (what is now Zimbabwe) and was educated there and in Scotland. He became a law professor in Scotland, and it was in this role that he first returned to Africa to work in Botswana, where he helped to set up a new law school at the University of Botswana. For many years he was Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh, and has been a visiting professor at a number of other universities elsewhere, including ones in Italy and the United States. He is now a Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh.
In addition to his university work, McCall Smith was for four years the vice-chairman of the Human Genetics Commission of the UK, the chairman of the British Medical Journal Ethics Committee, and a member of the International Bioethics Commission of UNESCO. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including The Crime Writers' Association Dagger in the Library Award; the United Kingdom's Author of The Year Award in 2004 and Sweden's Martin Beck award. He holds honorary doctorates from 12 universities, most recently from Southern Methodist University, Dallas. In 2007 he was made a CBE for his services to literature in the Queen's New Year Honors List. In 2010 McCall Smith was awarded the Presidential Order of Merit by the President of Botswana.
Alexander McCall Smith currently lives in Edinburgh with his wife Elizabeth (an Edinburgh doctor), and their two daughters Lucy and Emily. His hobbies include playing wind instruments, and he is the co-founder of an amateur orchestra called "The Really Terrible Orchestra" in which he plays the bassoon and his wife plays the horn.
"The best, most charming, honest, hilarious, and life-affirming books to appear in years" —The Plain Dealer
News
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency was made into a thirteen part television series, which was aired in America by HBO in Spring 2009. The first episode was directed by Anthony Minghella, and Grammy award winning singer, Jill Scott, plays Mma Ramotswe.
Another new series, Corduroy Mansions, debuted in the summer of 2010.
A new story about Isabel Dalhousie will be released in November as an original ebook.
Links
Alexander McCall Smith official websiteNew York Times interview
No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series on HBO
On Point interview with Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander McCall Smith twitter account
Books
The Double Comfort Safari Club
Readers will agree that this touching and dramatic eleventh installment in Alexander McCall Smith’s beloved and best-selling series is the finest yet. In this story, Precious Ramotswe deals with issues of mistaken identity and great fortune against the beautiful backdrop of Botswana’s remote and striking Okavango Delta.
Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi head to a safari camp to carry out a delicate mission on behalf of a former guest who has left one of the guides a large sum of money. But once they find their man, Precious begins to sense that something is not right. To make matters worse, shortly before their departure Mma Makutsi’s fiancé, Phuti Radiphuti, suffers a debilitating accident, and when his aunt moves in to take care of him, she also pushes Mma Makutsi out of the picture. Could she be trying to break up the relationship? Finally, a local priest and his wife independently approach Mma Ramotswe with concerns of infidelity, creating a rather unusual and tricky situation. Nevertheless, Precious is confident that with a little patience, kindness and good sense things will work out for the best, something that will delight her many fans.
Now available in paperback.
(Pantheon, April 2010)
The Charming Quirks of Others
In this latest and most felicitous addition to the Isabel Dalhousie series, our inquisitive heroine comes to see that there are very few of us who are not flawed...herself included.
Isabel has been asked for her help in a rather tricky situation: A successor is being sought for the headmaster at a local boys' school. The board has three final candidates but has received an anonymous letter alleging that one of them has a very serious skeleton in the closet. Could Isabel discreetly look into it? And so she does. What she discovers about all the candidates is surprising, but what she discovers about herself and about Jamie, the father of her young son, turns out to be equally revealing.
Isabel's investigation will have her exploring issues of ambition, as well as of charity, forgiveness, and humility, as she moves nearer and nearer to some of the most hidden precincts of the heart.
Here is Isabel Dalhousie at her beguiling best: intelligent, insightful, and with a unique understanding of the quirks of human nature.
(Pantheon, September 2010)
The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party
The latest installment in the beloved, best-selling series is once again a beautiful blend of wit and wisdom, and a profoundly touching tale of the human heart.
At a remote cattle post south of Gaborone, two cows have been killed and Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's No. 1 Lady Detective, is asked to investigate by a rather frightened and furitive gentleman. It is an intriguing problem with plenty of suspects--including, surprisingly, her own client.
To complicate matters, Mma Ramotswe is haunted by a vision of her dear old white van, and Grace Makutsi witnesses it as well. Is it the ghost of her old friend, or has it risen from the junkyard? In the meantime, one of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni's apprentices may have gotten a girl pregnant and, under pressure to marry her, has run away. Naturally, it is up to Precious to help sort things out. Add to the mix Violet Sephotho's newly launched run for Botswana Parliament and a pair of perfect wedding shoes--will wedding bells finally ring for Phuti Radiphuti and Grace Makutsi?--and we have a charming and delightful tale in the inimitable style of Alexander McCall Smith.
(Pantheon, March 2011)
La's Orchestra Saves the World
From the best-selling author of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series comes a delightful and moving story that celebrates the healing powers of friendship and music.
It is 1939. Lavender--La to her friends--decides to flee London, not only to avoid German bombs but also to escape the memories of her shattered marriage. The peace and solitude of the small town she settles in are therapeutic...at least at first. As the war drags on, La is in need of some diversion and wants to boost the town's morale, so she organizes an amateur orchestra, drawing musicians from the village and the local RAF base. Among the strays she corrals is Feliks, a shy, proper Polish refugee who becomes her prized recruit--and the object of feelings she thought she'd put away forever.
Does La's orchestra save the world? The people who come to hear it think so. But what will become of it after the war is over? And what will become of La herself? And of La's heart?
With his all-embracing empathy and gentle sense of humor, Alexander McCall Smith makes of La's life--and love--a tale to enjoy and cherish.
(Pantheon, December 2009)
The Unbearable Lightness of Scones
The witty and utterly delightful new novel in the national bestselling 44 Scotland Street series.
Featuring all the quirky characters we have come to know and love, The Unbearable Lightness of Scones finds Bertie, the precocious six-year-old, still troubled by his rather overbearing mother, Irene, but seeking his escape in the Cub Scouts. Matthew is rising to the challenge of married life with newfound strength and resolve, while Domenica epitomizes the loneliness of the long-distance intellectual. Cyril, the gold-toothed star of the whole show, succumbs to the kind of romantic temptation that no dog can resist and creates a small problem, or rather six of them, for his friend and owner Angus Lordie.
With his customary deftness, Alexander McCall Smith once again brings us an absorbing and entertaining tale of some of Scotland's most quirky and beloved characters--all set in the beautiful, stoic city of Edinburgh.
(Anchor Books, January 2010)
The Dog Who Came in from the Cold
The heartwarming and hilarious new installment in the Corduroy Mansions series presents the further adventures of Alexander McCall Smith's newest character: the Pimlico terrier Freddie de la Hay.
In the elegantly crumbling mansion block in Pimlico called Corduroy Mansions, the comings and goings of the wonderfully motely crew of residents continue apace. A pair of New Age operators has determined that Terrence Moongrove's estate is the cosmologically correct place for their center of cosmological studies. Literary agent Barbara Ragg has decided to represent Autobiography of a Yeti, purportedly dictaded to the author by the Abominable Snowman himself. And our small, furry, endlessly surprising hero Freddie de la Hay--belonging to failed oenophile William French--has been recruited by MI6 to infiltrate a Russian spy ring. Needless to say, the other denizens of Corduroy Mansions have issues of their own. But all of them will be addressed with the wit and insight into the foibles of the human condition that have become the hallmark of this peerless storyteller.
(Pantheon, July 2011)
The Forgotten Affairs of youth: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel
In this latest installment of the beloved Isabel Dalhousie series, our inquisitive heroine helps a new friend discover the identity of her father.
Isabel and her fiancé know who they are and where they come from. But not everybody is so fortunate. Jane Cooper, a visiting Australian philosopher on sabbatical in Edinburgh, has more questions than answers. Adopted at birth, Jane is trying to find her biological father, but all she knows about him is that he was a student in Edinburgh years ago. When she asks for Isabel's help in this seemingly impossible search...well, of course Isabel obliges.
But Isabel also manages to find time for her own concerns: her young son, Charlie, already walking and talking; her housekeeper, Grace, whose spiritualist has lately been doubling as a financial advisor; her niece Cat's latest relationship; and the pressing question of when and how Isabel and Jamie should finally get married.
Should the forgotten affairs of youth be left in the past, or can the memories help us understand the present? In her inimitable way, Isabel leads us to a new understanding of the meaning of family.
(Pantheon, December 2011)