“She would not allow herself to remember how Note had treated her, and many others too, she suspected. She had forgiven him, yes, but she still did not like to remember. And perhaps a deliberate act of forgetting went along with forgiveness. You forgave, and then you said to yourself: Now I shall forget. Because if you did not forget, then your forgiveness would be tested, perhaps many times and in ways that you could not resist, and you might go back to anger, and to hating.”

Rhodesian, Zimbabwean, and Scottish legal scholar and novelist

Sir Alexander McCall Smith is a Rhodesian, Zimbabwean, and Scottish legal scholar and writer of fiction. Born and raised in Southern Rhodesia, he taught medical law at the University of Edinburgh and built a career in law and bioethics before becoming widely known as a novelist. He became an expert in medical law and bioethics and served on British and international committees in those fields. He is best known as the creator of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, and his fiction has sold widely in English and been translated into many languages.