The World According to Bertie (38 page)

Alexander McCall Smith

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO BERTIE

Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the international phenomenon The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, the Isabel Dalhousie series, the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series, and the 44 Scotland Street series. He is professor emeritus of medical law at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and has served on many national and international bodies concerned with bioethics. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe and he was a law professor at the University of Botswana. Visit his Web site at
www.alexandermccallsmith.com
.

PRAISE FOR THE 44 SCOTLAND STREET SERIES

“Irresistible…. Packed with the charming characters, piercing perceptions and shrewd yet generous humor that have become McCall Smith's cachet.”

—
Chicago Sun-Times

“Will make you feel as though you live in Edinburgh, if only for a short while, and it's a fine place to visit indeed….Long live the folks on Scotland Street.”

—
The Times-Picayune
(New Orleans)

“McCall Smith's generous writing and dry humor, his gentleness and humanity, and his ability to evoke a place and a set of characters without caricature or condescension have endeared his books…to readers.”

—
The New York Times

“Entertaining and witty….A sly send-up of society in Edinburgh.”

—
The Orlando Sentinel

“Just about perfect…. Contains a healthy helping of McCall Smith's patented charm.”

—
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Mr. McCall Smith, a fine writer, paints his hometown of Edinburgh as indelibly as he captures the sunniness of Africa. We can almost feel the mists as we tread the cobblestones.”

—
The Dallas Morning News

BOOKS BY ALEXANDER M
cC
ALL SMITH

IN THE ISABEL DALHOUSIE SERIES

The Sunday Philosophy Club

Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

The Right Attitude to Rain

The Careful Use of Compliments

The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

IN THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY SERIES

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Tears of the Giraffe

Morality for Beautiful Girls

The Kalahari Typing School for Men

The Full Cupboard of Life

In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

Blue Shoes and Happiness

The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

The Miracle at Speedy Motors

IN THE PORTUGUESE IRREGULAR VERBS SERIES

Portuguese Irregular Verbs

The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs

At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances

IN THE 44 SCOTLAND STREET SERIES

44 Scotland Street

Espresso Tales

Love Over Scotland

The World According to Bertie

         

The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa

FOOTNOTES

^*1
Lit: nothing about humanity is alien to me; a common Edinburgh way of saying: I've seen it all.
Return to text.

FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, NOVEMBER 2008

Copyright © 2007 by Alexander McCall Smith

Illustrations copyright © 2007 by Iain McIntosh

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd., Edinburgh, in 2007.

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book is excerpted from a series that originally appeared in the
Scotsman
newspaper.

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948–
The world according to Bertie by / Alexander McCall Smith.
—1st Anchor Books ed.
p. cm.
1. Apartment houses—Fiction. 2. Edinburgh (Scotland)—Social life and customs—Fiction.
I
. Title.
PR6063.C326W67 2008
823'.914—dc22
2008028140

www.anchorbooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-307-45522-2

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