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ee71850
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She had been seized with a sudden existential horror. The house had white carpets and white furniture and, most significantly, no books.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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fad17ae
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Sometimes it was important simply to get out. It did not matter where you went, as long as you got out of the office, or the kitchen, or any other place where duty required you to be, and went to some place that you did not have to be.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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3652a5b
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The rules of the jungle did not apply to those who wrote the rules of the jungle.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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4b703a4
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Surely it is better, thought Domenica, that forty-five should buy the book and actually read it, than should many thousands, indeed millions, buy it and put it on their shelves, like...Professor Hawking's Brief History of Time. That was a book that had been bought by millions, but had been demonstrated to have been read by only a minute proportion of those who had acquired it. For do we not all have a copy of that on our shelves, and who am..
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reading
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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4ceb61b
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You cannot make somebody love something. They must have love in their heart first.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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8a4b178
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The ordinary you, the you that has to go to work every morning, the you that has to run a household, pay bills, do all of those things--that you is somehow changed into an exciting, artistic, fully alive you. That's what Paris does.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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30267ca
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And the beautiful are forgiven; no matter how egregious their shortcomings, they are forgiven.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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ca59571
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None of us knows how we will cope with snakes until the moment arises, and then most of us find out that we do not do it very well. Snakes were one of the tests which life sent for us, and there was no telling how we might respond until the moment arrived. Snakes and men. These were the things sent to try women, and the outcome was not always what we might want it to be.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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dd8b2f1
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has it ever occurred to people that love at first sight might be the rule rather than the exception? How many people fall in love gradually rather than on the first occasion they meet the other person?
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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fc2e256
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There's a difference, I think, between falling in love and knowing it.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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7671cd5
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Anthropology, she thought, like charity, surely begins at home.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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36901a3
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We chose younger and younger politicians to lead us because they looked good on television and were sharp. But really we should be looking for wisdom, and choosing people who had acquired it; and such people, in general, looked bad on television - gray, lined, thoughtful.
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television
youth
politicians
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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48097e3
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Women, as usual, were expected to behave better than men, and inevitably attracted criticism for doing things that men were licensed to do with impunity.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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86436ef
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The problem with being me, thought Isabel, as she walked along George IV Bridge, is that I keep thinking about the problem of being me.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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ecd2f7d
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There are so many ways of falling off the high moral ground you've carefully built up for yourself. Moral ground is like that--slippery at the edges.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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3e5866f
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The value of money is subjective, depending on age. At the age of one, one multiplies the actual sum by 145,000, making one pound seem like 145,000 pounds to a one-year-old. At seven - Bertie's age - the multiplier is 24, so that five pounds seems like 120 pounds. At the age of twenty four, five pounds is five pounds; at forty five it is divided by 5, so that it seems like one pound and one pound seems like twenty pence. (All figures courte..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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2eb13db
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Resolution. Musicians know all about that, don't they? Pieces of music seek resolution, have to end on a particular note, or it sounds all wrong. The same applies to our lives. It's exactly the same.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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bc80ba7
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Moisturiser and a good cry: two things for modern men to think about.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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8e3dca1
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Mma Ramotswe had listened to a World Service broadcast on her radio one day which had simply taken her breath away. It was about philosophers who called themselves existentialists and who, as far as Mma Ramotswe could ascertain, lived in France. These French people said that you should just live in a way which made you feel real, and that the real thing to do was the right thing too. Mma Ramotswe had listened in astonishment. You did not ha..
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morality
philosophy
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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d927802
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Well," said Mma Ramotswe, "I have felt that anger. I felt it when I saw that the van had gone. I felt it a bit in the truck on the way back. But what is the point of anger now, Mma? I don't think that anger will help us." Mma Makutsi sighed. "You are right about anger," she said. "There is no point in it."
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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c38284d
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So it was perfectly possible that there were men who liked shopping, men who understood exactly what it was all about, but Mma Ramotwe had yet to meet such a man. Maybe they existed elsewhere - in France, perhaps - but they did not seem to be much in evidence in Botswana.
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mma-ramotswe
humour
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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8041e31
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It was just too easy to say that adults did not like stories that were simple, and perhaps that was wrong. Perhaps that was what adults really wanted, searched for and rarely found: a simple story in which good triumphs against cynicism and dispair. That was what she wanted, but she was aware of the fact that one did not publicise the fact too widely, certainly not in sophisticated circles. Such circles wanted complexity, dysfunction and ir..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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8190b96
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It is the search for beauty...That is what it is. We find ourselves on this earth--gods and men--and we know that it is beautiful. That is one of the few things we understand--beauty; because it is there, in the world, and we can see it all about us. We want beauty. It requires our love. It just does.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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729177e
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Will he come to me, Dream Angus, Come quietly through the evening light, Come when I do not expect him, and I am sleepy, Come when I am drowsy, when I am ready for rest; Will he come to me, Dream Angus? ... Will I see the birds about his head, The birds that are his kisses? Will I believe that each of us, Even he who thinks himself unloved, May be transformed, made different By one who finds him marvellous? Will I think that? ... ..
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ease-of-mind
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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44ef0be
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Dislike required energy and a good memory for slights; geniality was so much less demanding, and at the end of the day felt better too.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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3893f93
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What does it matter, she thought, if businesses are left unattended, if people are not always as we want them to be; we need the time just to be human, to enjoy something like this: a boy chasing ants, a dry land drinking at last, birds in the the sky, a rainbow.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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476c815
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It is hard, she thought, it is hard for us to think of people who dislike us because none of us, in our heart, believes that we deserve the hatred of others.
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hatred
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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fb71196
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The trouble with technology is that it's dehumanised us - it's removed the restraints of ordinary human interactions. So we lose the notion that the person with whom we're dealing is a person like us, with failings and feelings. It's exactly the same as in wartime. When people are engaged in conflict, they very easily lose sight of the humanity of the other. They become capable of doing things that they would never do in their ordinary live..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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fef5b86
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Hospitals were to her a memento mori in bricks and mortar; an awful reminder of the inevitable end that was coming to all of us but which she felt was best ignored while one got on with the business of life.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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cfd0bde
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I have a feeling that we've seen the dismantling of civilisation, brick by brick, and now we're looking into the void. We thought that we were liberating people from oppressive cultural circumstances, but we were, in fact, taking something away from them. We were killing off civility and concern. We were undermining all those little ties of loyalty and consideration and affection that are necessary for human flourishing. We thought that tra..
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nationalism
civilization
society
culture
tradition
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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64a9c6e
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Those images of those old places, the places you come from, never completely disappear. They remain with you, those scraps of memory; those pictures somewhere in your mind of how things were, of what the sun looked like when it shone through the window of your childhood room and caught floating specks of dust in its rays; of how you looked up at the ceiling above your sleeping mat; of the faces of an aunt or a grandparent or a friend; of al..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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ffec667
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Portraiture has its risks, and I suppose a dissident Free Presbyterian fatwa is one of them.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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30352e1
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If the lord came back today, [Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni] thought, he would probably be a mechanic, he reflected. That would be a great honour for mechanics everywhere. And there is no doubt but that e would choose Africa: Israel was far too dangerous these days. In fact, the more one thought about it, the more likely it was that he would choose Botswana, and Gabarone in particular. Now that would be a wonderful honour for the people of Botswana; ..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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d0e4db4
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Moral beauty existed as clearly as any other form of beauty and perhaps that was where we could find the God who was so vividly, and sometimes bizarrely, described in our noisy religious explanations. It was an intriguing thought, as it meant that a concert could be a spiritual experience, a secular painting a religious icon, a beguiling face a passing angel.
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religion
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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1c6b857
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Being loved and admired by a man like that--and she knew that this man, this mechanic, this fixer of machines with their broken hearts, did indeed love and admire her--was like walking in the sunshine; it gave the same feeling of warmth and pleasure to bask in the love of one who has promised it, publicly at a wedding ceremony, and who is constant in his promise that such love will be given for the rest of his days. What more could any woma..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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7ffb5ed
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She remembered love, though, and a feeling of warmth. It was like remembering light, or the glow that sometimes persists after a light has gone out.
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mccall
modern-retelling
jane-austen
love-quotes
love
smith
emma
metaphors
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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070e74d
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Go to any small village anywhere in the world, and see what they remember. Everything. It's all there -- passed on like a precious piece of information, some secret imparted from one who knew to one who yearns to know. Taken good care of.
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wisdom
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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3ee6e94
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To be able to imagine the ohter, and the experience of the other was what wisdome was all about; but nobody talked about wisdom very much anymore, nor virtue perhaps because wisdom was nto appreciated in a world of glitz and effect.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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16e6d51
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There are some very inventive adults, Mma. When you listen to them, you have to divide everything they say by two, and then take away ten. As you have to do with some politicians.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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e202d39
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Teachers were not allowed to beat children as they did in the past, although, Mma Ramotswe reflected, there were some boys-and indeed some young men-who might have been greatly improved by moderate physical correction. The apprentices, for example: would it help if Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni resorted to physical chastisement-nothing severe, of course-but just an occasional kick in the seat of the pants while they were bending over to change a tyre..
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bottom
women
humor
blow
kick
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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5cc65f5
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Charming people, when not actively shooting one another," a friend had once said, which was so unkind, but, like so many unkind comments, had a grain of truth in it. They shoot one another and had been doing so for centuries. They did bicker over and brood on long-dead history--or history that should be long dead. The problem with history was that it refused to lie down and die."
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long-dead-history
grudges
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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8dd9d90
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those who crept about at night risked stepping on a snake if they were not careful, as snakes move out of our way only if they feel vibrations in the ground. A light person--a person of non-traditional build, for example--was at far greater risk of being bitten by a snake for that very reason. That was another argument, of course, for maintaining traditional build--consideration for snakes, and safety too.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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a9e0f01
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I am just saying that we have to have some things that we like, otherwise we shall be very unhappy. And if you are very unhappy you can die - we all know that.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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b22c8e9
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Inside every one of us, thought Mma Ramotswe, there is the child we once were, the child that was unsure about the world and our place in it.
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Alexander McCall Smith |