Gaborone - Precious Ramotswe is "traditionally built" and anything but glamorous. She drives a rattle-trap white van, her favourite dish is boiled pumpkin, and her boyfriend is a middle-aged mechanic. Sipping redbush tea behind an old typewriter in her simple office, Mma Ramotse finds philandering husbands, missing children, and solutions to often not very overwhelming domestic problems.
As the main character in Alexander McCall Smith's series The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, she has also brought fame to Botswana and its capital Gaborone, where her story is located.
Now comprising 10 books with more than 20 million copies sold worldwide, a film directed by the late Anthony Minghella in 2008, and a subsequent BBC series also shown in the US and Africa, the success of Mma Ramotse had nonetheless simple origins.
During a visit in Botswana, while taking a walk, "I met a woman who gave a chicken to the people with whom I was staying. I remember thinking at the time: This is a remarkable woman I wonder what her life story is," McCall Smith remembers on his website.
Reflecting on the success of his books during a visit to Gaborone last week, Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith told the German Press Agency
