Alexander McCall Smith was born in Zimbabwe, then known as Southern Rhodesia, and received his education in both Zimbabwe and Scotland. He later became a law professor in Scotland and first returned to Africa to work in Botswana, where he helped establish a new law school at the University of Botswana.
Currently, he serves as Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh, while also holding visiting professorships at various universities worldwide, including institutions in Italy and the United States, where he has twice been a visiting professor at Southern Methodist University Law School in Dallas, Texas.
In addition to his academic pursuits, Smith is the vice-chairman of the Human Genetics Commission of the UK, chairman of the British Medical Journal Ethics Committee, and a member of the International Bioethics Commission of UNESCO.
Throughout his career, Smith has written over fifty books, encompassing both academic and literary works, including a number of best-selling children's books. In 1998, his detective novel, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, received two Booker Judge's Special Recommendations, leading to the publication of a four-book series, which has been optioned for a feature film and has received widespread acclaim worldwide.
Three of the series' titles, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Tears of the Giraffe, and Morality for Beautiful Girls, have been published by Anchor Books, with the fourth, The Kalahari Typing School for Men, set to be released by Pantheon in April 2003. Smith has also begun work on a new series featuring a lady detective, Isabel Dalhousie, with the first title, Crushed Strawberry, scheduled for release in London next year.
Today, Alexander McCall Smith resides in Edinburgh with his wife Elizabeth, a doctor, and their two daughters, Lucy and Emily, as well as their cat, Gordon. He enjoys playing wind instruments and 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.
