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Late this summer, the team at Commonwealth Writers gathered together the last three Chairs of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize judging panels: me, Bernardine Evaristo, and Razia Iqbal. We had the daunting — and hugely pleasurable — task of choosing our favourite stories to publish in this anthology. During our deliberations, we looked for writing that evoked a strong sense of place. After all, the adventure of reading away from one’s own immediate environment is the promise of instant travel, the possibility of immersion in another reality. We also looked for writing that was ambitious, stories that offered surprise, stories that made us think, and stories whose characters stayed in our minds long after the pages were turned.

The result is an eclectic mix of genres and settings — both in time and place. The voices you will find here are as varied and individual as the countries from which the authors are writing. Each story brings us news from another land: there’s the hunt for a giant squid in New Zealand; a chronicle of hard times in Singapore; a baby shower and a lost boy in the Bahamas; an English woman and her spectral lover in China; and adventures in taxidermy in South Africa. Each story is written in English, but the language is inflected with the cadences of locality and a host of native tongues: Ganda, Chinese, patois, Afrikaans. Several of the writers appearing here already have a significant body of work to their credit. A couple appear with the first stories they have ever written. In casting its net across the globe — bringing stories from around the world to readers around the world — the Commonwealth Short Story Prize is unique in allowing such a range of writers to appear together in one volume.

Ellah Wakatama Allfrey

London, November 2014