One-Man Fiction Factory

By JEFF CHU | Edinburgh Sunday, June 08, 2003

Alexander McCall Smith is fond of a fat — no, make that "traditionally built" — woman named Precious. Their relationship began in 1996 while Smith was on holiday in France. During that trip, he scribbled a few lines of a short story, which grew into a novel, then a series, chronicling the life of Precious Ramotswe, owner of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Gaborone, Botswana. Four books into the series, McCall Smith is not stopping yet. "To say goodbye now would be like leaving in the middle of a conversation," the 54-year-old Zimbabwe-born Scot says. "Rather rude."

Quite right, say his fans, who this week will welcome the opening of The Full Cupboard of Life (Polygon; 202 pages), the fifth Ramotswe book. Its predecessors — The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Tears of the Giraffe, Morality for Beautiful Girls and The Kalahari Typing School for Men — have become word-of-mouth hits not only in Britain but also in the U.S., where all are currently on major best-seller lists. Already available in five languages, the books are being

excerpt
What had Mma Ramotswe to be embarrassed about? She thought hard. Her weight was hardly a confidential matter, and anyway, she was proud of being a traditionally built African lady, unlike these terrible, sticklike creatures one saw in the advertisements. Then there were her corns — well, those were more or less on public display when she wore her sandals. Really, there was nothing that she felt she had to hide.

Now constipation was quite a different matter. It would be dreadful for the whole world to know about troubles of that nature. She felt terribly sorry for people who suffered from constipation, and she knew that there were many who did. There were probably enough of them to form a political party — with a chance of government perhaps — but what would such a party do if it was in power? Nothing, she imagined. It would try to pass legislation, but would fail. — From The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

translated into 11 more, and a film adaptation is in the works. This unexpected success has only energized the prolific McCall Smith to write yet more, including a series of mysteries set in his hometown of Edinburgh and a satirical look at German academia.

The bow-tied, slightly rumpled McCall Smith knows plenty about academics — his day job is teaching medical law at the University of Edinburgh. He's one of those insufferably gifted people who can dabble in this and that and do it all well, as can be seen in the professorially cluttered study in the Victorian flat he shares with his wife Elizabeth, their two daughters and a Tonkinese cat called Gordon. There are promo leaflets for the Italian translations of Mma Ramotswe, as his heroine is called according to Botswana etiquette; tomes on law and medicine; a report from Britain's Human Genetics Commission (he's vice chairman); dozens of his children's books (the first success was The Perfect Hamburger); and several saxophones (he plays bassoon, too, in a group called the Really Terrible Orchestra). How does he manage all that? It helps that writer's block has never been a problem. McCall Smith estimates his writing speed at an astonishing 1,000 words an hour. "I'm very lucky," he says. "I don't have to make a great effort."

Nor do readers. The books "make a moral point about the importance of courtesy, of trying to keep traditional ways," he says. That — as well as the need to touch on topics such as aids — risks weighing the tales down. But his gentle prose eases the ride through Mma Ramotswe's world of moral crimes and social misdemeanors. "I'm fed up with gritty, in-your-face stuff," he says. "I don't like to read too much about the distressing aspects of life."

Especially when it comes to Africa, McCall Smith tries to focus on the positive. His childhood years in what was then Rhodesia were happy ones, and "early memories of that sort are so important." He praises the "quiet decency" of Botswana, which he got to know well while helping to set up the nation's law school in the early '80s. "People don't usually see this side of Africa," he says. "They just see war, famine and oppression."

Expect more happy days in Mma Ramotswe's future — more lessons in Botswana etiquette, more neatly solved cases, maybe even a wedding to her longtime fiancé, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. And McCall Smith's future is busily happy, too: On Sunday, the bbc will air a documentary in which he returns to Botswana to revisit the inspirations for his tales and characters. Look for the author's next two series, with typically droll titles. Out in August are three short, satirical works: Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances. And due in 2004 is the first of four novels about gumshoe Isabelle Dalhousie, "a fairly intellectual Edinburgh lady who has a daughter with unsuitable boyfriends." (He says that, in this case, he is not writing from experience.) McCall Smith didn't set out to become a one-man fiction factory; like destiny or a good plot, it just happened. How does it feel? Mma Ramotswe knows. "I must remember," she says, "how fortunate I am in this life." His sentiments exactly.