The Caine Prize for African Writing is a literature prize awarded to an African writer of a short story published in English. The prize was launched in 2000 to encourage and highlight the richness and diversity of African writing by bringing it to a wider audience internationally. The focus on the short story reflects the contemporary development of the African story-telling tradition. This collection brings together the five 2017 shortlisted stories, along with stories written at the Caine Prize Writers’ Workshop, which took place in April 2017.