When you invent a fictional character you give a hostage to fortune: the character does not belong just to you—he or she belongs to readers and to the world at large. So others may propose to give your character a larger life,whether on the screen or in some other context. Most authors are wary of this—and understandably so; many literary characters have been made to do and say things they would never dream of doing in the hands of their original begetter.

It was a happy day for me when Stuart Brown came to ask me if he could write a Mma Ramotswe cookbook. I already knew Stuart and I was confident that he would produce something with which I—and Mma Ramotswe—would be perfectly happy. I knew that he had made a very detailed study of the books and indeed it seemed to me that he knew more about them than I did myself. Authors often forget the details.

When Stuart showed me a draft of the book I was astonished at the extent to which food is mentioned in the original books. I do not remember endowing these books with quite so many culinary references, but there is no doubt that I did. That is not because Mma Ramotswe is a glutton—it is just that she often thinks about things when cooking or eating, and so it was understandable, then, that there should be a fair number of references to food.

The cuisine of sub-Saharan Africa is not widely known in the wider world. This book is to be welcomed in redressing that situation and in bringing to the attention of readers some of the tasty dishes with which the cooks of Africa—many of them women very much like Mma Ramotswe—feed their families. Do not look for great culinary elaboration here—look instead for good, nutritious fare, exactly the sort of food that we can imagine gracing the table as Mma Ramotswe sits down to dinner with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and the children after a hard day’s work in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and Tlokweng Road SpeedyMotors. Can I smell pumpkin? I think I can. Do I hear the sound of cattle lowing in the distance? I think I do. Is all well in the kitchens of Botswana? I think it is.

Alexander McCall Smith