A young boy befriends a woman who has moved into the neighborhood, against his mother's wishes.

A darkly humorous, surreal story about societal expectations around an unmarried South Asian woman.

As a slave ship sinks, enslaved Africans share their life stories, turning survival into defiant storytelling.

A mother races through Guyana's landscape to protect her child from an Ol' Higue, set against colonial departure and folklore.

A forbidden relationship reveals the value of an Aboriginal boy and challenges racism and reconciliation.

A Mauritian woman's love of tea becomes a lens on colonial history, education, language, sex, and women's ties.

A young woman in Mumbai chooses between possible mothers in a shelter in a surreal adoption story.

A narrative exploration of what burns within and around us, moving through flames, red bones, ashes, and a world on fire.

A Caribbean story of superstition, grief, lies, and survival, rooted in pre-independence memories.

A 12-year-old girl and her brother visit their troubled father; mistrust of her own body and duty to protect him lead her into danger.

During World War II, far from home, two West African men find strength and comfort in friendship.

A child is taken in by her mother's friend, who seems protective but is actually auctioning her off piece by piece to the highest bidder.

A sincere, playful story about grief, loss, addiction, tradition, and the mysticism of insular life.

An elder from the Khoisan community protests outside government offices, demanding recognition against political oppression and linguistic exclusion.

A young boy befriends a new neighbor against his mother's wishes.

This fable-like short story returns to humanity's distant past and follows the day when cold blood first flowed. It unfolds on a primordial scale, with the earth itself seeming to swallow the moment.

Set in a far distant past, it imagines the first day in a mythic register.

In a climate-ravaged future, a young freediver traces her mother's final dive and searches for the reason behind her death. The result is a quiet story of mourning that reconnects sea and memory.

By following her mother's final dive, the narrator moves closer to lost time and the memory held by the sea.

Set after emancipation in St Vincent, the story follows a woman asked to find a missing Methodist minister. The fee is tempting, but she must weigh it against what the request says about the island’s history of violence and power.

A woman is forced to choose between money and conscience under the weight of history.

The story looks at how short-term construction work by overseas crews affects a Jamaican community, and follows a father forced to choose between income and his daughter’s health. Everyday life comes into focus under the pressure of the rainy season.

The choice between earning a living and protecting a child becomes inseparable from the community’s own change.

Between capitalism and Christian fundamentalism, mining, sex work, bread making, and a coup all cross paths. Out of that instability, unexpected solidarity and small acts of mercy begin to emerge.

In the middle of an unstable society, scattered people begin to connect in unexpected ways.

Granddaughter of the Octopus by Rémy Ngamije is A short story that draws on human relationships and the instability of memory.

Granddaughter of the Octopus by Rémy Ngamije is A short story that draws on human relationships and the instability of memory.

I Cleaned The by Kanya D'Almeida is A short story that draws on human relationships and the instability of memory.

I Cleaned The by Kanya D'Almeida is A short story that draws on human relationships and the instability of memory.

Turnstones by Carol Farrelly is A short story that draws on human relationships and the instability of memory.

Turnstones by Carol Farrelly is A short story that draws on human relationships and the instability of memory.

The Disappearance of Mumma Del by Roland Watson-Grant is A short story that draws on human relationships and the instability of memory.

The Disappearance of Mumma Del by Roland Watson-Grant is A short story that draws on human relationships and the instability of memory.

Fertile Soil by Katerina Gibson is A short story that draws on human relationships and the instability of memory.

Fertile Soil by Katerina Gibson is A short story that draws on human relationships and the instability of memory.

A short story that explores gender norms and family pressures through a woman's decision to refuse to be a mother.

A short story that explores gender norms and family pressures through a woman's decision to refuse to be a mother.

A short story that explores social and personal boundaries in India, depicting tensions and hopes within family and community.

A short story that explores social and personal boundaries in India, depicting tensions and hopes within family and community.

A short story that depicts racialized fear and communal gaze through the rumors and prejudice surrounding Mr. Jensen.

A short story that depicts racialized fear and communal gaze through the rumors and prejudice surrounding Mr.

A short story that depicts the subtleties of aging and married life through the conversations and concerns that flow in a Jamaican household.

A short story that depicts the subtleties of aging and married life through the conversations and concerns that flow in a Jamaican household.

A short story about loss and self-development from the perspective of a child who is relearning social behavior after a bereavement.

A short story about loss and self-development from the perspective of a child who is relearning social behavior after a bereavement.

A short story about the disruption caused when a sister from London arrives in a Zambian household. Through the voice of a servant, it brings class difference, envy, vanity, and unexpected emotional shifts into view.

An outsider sister entering the household exposes the fraying of relationships inside it.

A 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize regional winner from Europe. It explores the tension between custom and memory.

A 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize regional winner from the Caribbean. Its focus on the memory of home leaves a strong impression.

A 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize regional winner from the Pacific. Its forceful voice and unsettling mood stand out.

A thirteen-year-old boy in Lagos goes to church at his mother's insistence and questions the pastor's definition of true happiness. The story brings together poverty, religious language and a child's direct anger to ask who gets to define happiness.

A boy's plain, sharp voice unsettles the meaning of happiness as it is preached between faith and poverty.

The story treats the pregnancy of a twelve-year-old girl in India through a charged, fable-like frame where faith, family and social pressure converge. An inexplicable event involving the body exposes the expectations and coercions of a community.

What happens to a girl's body draws out the desires of faith and community around her.

Ghillie's Mum won the Canada and Europe region in 2018 as a story concerned with mother and child, family expectation and the weight of care. Through domestic scenes, it traces the less visible anxieties and responsibilities inside intimate relationships.

Within the closeness of family, affection and anxiety become difficult to untangle.

A protagonist in midlife crisis heads into the wilderness in search of a mysterious woman and is drawn into the unease of a story he has heard. The boundary between civility and wildness, narration and reality, slips until the cost of the tale arrives in an unexpected form.

A strange tale heard in a bar begins to alter the fate of the man who follows it into the wilderness.

On a wedding day in Samoa, Matalasi is surrounded by family and village expectation while suffocating between his gender identity and the imposed image of a bride. The story shows tradition, family honor and bodily norms pressing on one person's sense of survival.

Inside the bustle of wedding preparations, Matalasi faces a ritual that asks him to erase himself.

ナイジェリア出身の作家。2017年のCommonwealth Short Story Prize（アフリカ地域）受賞者。

ナイジェリア出身の作家。

インド出身の作家。2017年のCommonwealth Short Story Prize（アジア地域）受賞者。

インド出身の作家。

イギリス出身の作家。2017年のCommonwealth Short Story Prize（カナダ・ヨーロッパ地域）受賞者。

イギリス出身の作家。

A short story about an estranged father and son reuniting through their shared love of chocolate. The story won major short-story prizes and brought Persaud wider recognition.

A short story about an estranged father and son reuniting through their shared love of chocolate.

オーストラリア出身の作家。2017年のCommonwealth Short Story Prize（パシフィック地域）受賞者。

オーストラリア出身の作家。

The African regional winner of the 2016 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. A slight disturbance in everyday life gradually reveals the unease inside human relationships.

Small irregularities in daily life eventually become something far more unsettling.

Set in colonial India, this work interweaves a business built around a cow with the absurdities of community life. Social order is shaken from both commercial and religious angles.

Activity around a cow exposes the order and absurdity inside the community.

The Canada/Europe regional winner of the 2016 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Small dislocations in everyday life and feelings that cannot be spoken leave a strong impression.

A chain of brief scenes leaves only the contours of feeling sharply visible.

The Caribbean regional winner. A family with an odd name and a lightly comic sense of lack around food and daily life eventually shift into something more unsettling.

A light comic tone eventually flips into a different feeling altogether.

The Pacific regional winner. Within a life shaped by the sea, the connections between family, land, and memory are drawn quietly and clearly.

A life by the sea brings family memory into view.

The African regional winner of the 2015 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. The story quietly stages the distance inside a family and the friction created by values brought in from outside.

Outside pressure seeps into the intimacy of family life.

This allegorical short story follows a man who owns nothing but an umbrella as he moves from an asylum toward freedom. Reality and symbolism overlap, making solitude and release emerge at once.

A man who refuses to let go of his umbrella quietly reopens the question of what freedom means.

The Canada/Europe regional winner of the 2015 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Through a separated couple’s reunion, the story captures the feel of memory and distance.

After a long absence, how do spouses see each other again?

Set against Caribbean society, this short story traces the emotional knots around forgiveness and survival. An individual story and a community history overlap throughout.

Forgiveness and survival are placed at the center of the story with equal weight.

A short story where the sea and family memory intersect. Work that has continued in a faraway place is suddenly passed on to the next generation after an unexpected event.

A family history is handed on to the next generation through work by the sea.

Set in a tired little bar on the edge of town, this short story moves under the watchful sense of the other customers’ eyes and ears. Its uneasy atmosphere and sharp observation gradually raise the tension in the room.

Behind the bar’s quiet, the pressure of watching eyes thickens.

Set in an old house after a long dry spell, the story lets the smell of rain unlock a buried memory. The present-tense scene and the remembered past gradually overlap, revealing the story’s quiet tension between hope and loss.

The smell of rain opens a door to a memory that has been shut for years.

A brother and sister train side by side for a race, then a loss sends them onto different paths. Set against northern landscapes and bodily exertion, the story quietly brings forward the distance that can open inside intimacy.

Running does not draw them closer; it reveals the shape of their separation.

Against the social tensions of Trinidad, the story brings loss, violence and family secrecy into view with a restrained voice. It lets unease surface inside everyday life, alongside the sense of a place marked by history and community.

Beneath the quiet of daily life, what has been lost and concealed slowly comes into view.

Childhood sensations and family memory rise gradually alongside animal imagery. As the boundary between reality and unreality shifts, the story searches for forms of comfort and affection.

Even when memory is fragmented, the feelings that emerge from it remain vivid.

This short story traces the relationship between the dead and those left behind, with the funeral scene bringing memory, loss, and family ties to the surface. Its narration keeps humor and pain side by side.

At the funeral, memory and the pulse of life overlap.

Set in Bombay in 1939, this short story portrays the distance that grows within a five-year marriage and the subtle mismatch between husband and wife. Radio and the city’s atmosphere sustain a quiet tension.

The quiet temperature gap inside a marriage becomes the story’s core.

Through a woman who meets her husband six years after his death, this short story explores love, loss, and the echo of past relationships. The bond with a ghost throws real marriage and memory into sharper relief.

Death appears not as an ending, but as a force that changes the shape of a relationship.

This short story follows a boy by the sea and the memory of a grandfather who carries a line of fishermen, letting the sea’s presence and family history quietly intersect. The night sea scene brings a fading relationship into view.

Beyond the sea, a family history slowly comes into view.

Moving across England, the Balkans, and New Zealand, this collection traces the unexpected routes of people’s lives. Between urban and natural landscapes, it depicts unstable relationships and uncertain belonging.

As places change, the outlines of relationships change too.