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Alexander McCall Smith was born in Zimbabwe (called Southern Rhodesia at the time) 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. He is currently Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh, but has been a visiting professor at a number of other universities elsewhere, including ones in Italy and the United States (where he has twice been visiting professor at SMU Law School in Dallas, Texas).
In addition to his university work, he is 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.
Over the past twenty years, Smith has written more than fifty books, including specialist academic titles, short story collections, and a number of immensely popular children's books. In 1998, McCall Smith's detective novel, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, was published and received two Booker Judge's Special Recommendations. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series now numbers a total of four books (he is working on the fifth) and has been optioned for feature film. The series has been enthusiastically received throughout the world, and foreign language editions will be appearing in numerous countries.
Three of the books in the series, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency; Tears of the Giraffe; and Morality for Beautiful Girls, have recently been published by Anchor Books. The fourth, The Kalahari Typing school for Men will be published by Pantheon in April 2003. McCall Smith has recently finished the first book in a new series featuring a lady detective, Isabel Dalhousie (Scottish father, American mother) the first title of which, Crushed Strawberry, will be published in London next year.
Today Alexander McCall Smith lives in Edinburgh with his wife Elizabeth (an Edinburgh doctor), their two daughters Lucy and Emily, and their cat Gordon. 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 flute.
