Mma Ramotse shrugged; she had never thought about it. “I suppose that it means that we can all give something,” she said. “A giraffe has nothing else to give—only tears.” Did it mean that? she wondered. And for a moment she imagined that she saw a giraffe peering down through the trees, its strange, stilt-borne body camouflaged among the leaves; and its moist velvet cheeks and liquid eyes; and she thought of all the beauty that there was in Africa, and of the laughter, and the love.

The boy looked at the basket. “Is that true, Mma?”

Mma Ramotswe smiled.

“I hope so,” she said.

About the Author

ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH

TEARS OF THE GIRAFFE

Alexander McCall Smith is a professor of medical law at Edinburgh University. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe and taught law at the University of Botswana. He is the author of over fifty books on a wide range of subjects, including specialist titles such as Forensic Aspects of Sleep and The Criminal Law of Botswana, children’s books such as The Perfect Hamburger, and a collection of stories called Portuguese Irregular Verbs.

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Copyright Page

First Anchor Books Edition, August 2002

Copyright © 2000 by Alexander McCall Smith

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by
Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York,
and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada
Limited, Toronto. Originally published in softcover
in Scotland by Polygon, Edinburgh, in 2000.

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

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McCall Smith, R. A.

Tears of the giraffe / Alexander McCall Smith.

p. cm.

1. Ramotswe, Precious (Fictitious character)—Fiction.  2. Women private investigators—Botswana—Fiction.  3. Botswana—Fiction.  I. Title.

PR6063.C326 T4 2002

823'.914—dc21

2002018695

eISBN: 978-1-4000-7767-0

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