La Jolla — Who is this white man putting words in the mouth of an African woman?
He's Scottish. He wears an orange-and-green plaid kilt, the Macauley tartan. He doesn't have all of his hair. He's a medical law professor at the University of Edinburgh and an internationally renowned bioethicist when he's not rapidly pounding out books -- more than 50 so far -- ranging from "The Forensic Aspects of Sleep" and the definitive "The Criminal Law of Botswana" to "The Perfect Hamburger," a popular children's book, and "The Portuguese Irregular Verbs," a collection of short stories about Germans who refer to one another as "Professor, Doctor, Doctor."
She's from Botswana. She gets her hair braided, and wears a size 22 dress, admirably so, because, in her southern African circles, big is beautiful. Intuitive and resourceful, she's a private detective known around the world for solving quandaries as everyday as an adulterous husband or a sneaky teenage girl, and as extraordinary as the morality of beauty contestants (no hookers or shoplifters need apply) or the disappearance of a boy into the world of bush medicine, with its healing potions and pouches of lucky bones.
He knows her well. Very well. He created her.
Alexander McCall Smith, author of the bestselling "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" mystery series, starring Precious Ramotswe, gets the nuances so right that many readers assume he is a she.
"I've lived in Africa. I thought you were an African woman," Suzi Lacey tells him at a recent bookstore appearance here.
McCall Smith deadpans, "You'll notice that I'm wearing a skirt."
He adds: "As a writer, you've got to be able to put yourself in another's shoes. You've got to be able to empathize with people."
Empathize he does as he describes the positives of life on a continent that is usually portrayed as one coup, civil war, famine, drought and AIDS epidemic after another.
Not in his books. And not in Botswana, a stable, well-run and prosperous country, rich in diamonds and cattle. "Solidly democratic since 1966," McCall Smith points out, "the only consistently democratic country in Africa."
That is not the Africa most fiction readers know.
"So many writers, when they write about Africa, write 'Heart of Darkness' novels," he says. "They look at the pathology ... but there's an awful lot of people living decent, generous lives."
Like his heroine. In his latest book, "The Full Cupboard of Life," he writes:
