I started reading the 'No 1 Ladies Detective Agency' series many years ago, after I read a recommendation - and have been hooked on it since. 😊 Such pleasant delightful light reading! A great introduction to another culture and landscape, though maybe a partial view. Indians can relate to the values of Botswana, as described in here. Alexander McCall Smith is Scottish, by the way. He also has a series called the Isabel Dalhousie Novels - again, fantastic writing.
"...She leaned forward and sniffed at the stew. Mma Ramotswe believed in using your nose while cooking; too many people, she thought, relied on taste, and were always dipping a spoon into a dish to see how it was faring. In her view, that was unnecessary - and unhygienic. You could find out everything you needed to know through the sense of smell.
A good stew smelled like a ... well, a good stew; it would remind you of that time when the sun has just sunk over the Kalahari, when the cattle have been brought back into their kraal against a background of gentle lowing, when the moon is floating up in the sky over Botswana and the children are sitting about the fire, waiting for their dinner. It smelled like that.
It smelled like the world when, early in the morning, you made your way through the bush and the birds were just beginning to greet the world and the delicate leaves of the acacia trees were opening to the warmth of the gold with which the land was painted. It smelled like that, and all you had to do was to train yourself to know when something was just right."
Page 30, 'The House of the Unexpected Sisters'
from the 'No 1 Ladies Detective Agency' series, Alexander McCall Smith
