Alexander McCall Smith has written more than 50 books, including specialist academic titles, short story collections, and a number of immensely popular children's books. But he is best known for his internationally acclaimed No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, published in the US in 2002 and 2003. The first installment, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, received two Booker Judge's Special Recommendations upon its U.K. publication in 1998, and in 2003 received The Saga Wit Award (commonly known as the "silver Booker" for authors over the age of 50). The sixth book in the series is entitled In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (April 2005) and the seventh is due out in April 2006 and is entitled Blue Shoes and Happiness. The series has become an international bestseller, with more than 4 million copies in print in the U.S. alone. Another novel, The Sunday Philosophy Club was published in 2004 and immediately leapt onto national bestseller lists. The second book in this series, entitled Friends, Lovers, Chocolate, was published in September 2005.

In addition, McCall Smith's delightful German professor series, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances were published in the US in January 2005. He is also the author of two children's books, Akimbo and the Elephants and Akimbo and the Lions. Pantheon has published Alexander McCall Smith's collection of African folktales, The Girl Who Married a Lion, as well as his serial novel, 44 Scotland Street, (June 2005). The second in the 44 Scotland Street series, entitled Espresso Tales, will be published in June 2006.

McCall Smith was born in what is now Zimbabwe 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.

In addition to his university work, he was for four years 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.

Alexander McCall Smith currently 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.