The single-handedness of the molecular building blocks of biological polymers -D-sugars and L-amino acids -is considered a signature of life. In the absence of a chiral directing force, an abiotic process necessarily yields an equal mixture of left-and right-handed molecules. The question of how biological homochirality could have emerged from a presumably racemic prebiotic soup has intrigued scientists since Pasteur's deliberate separation of the homochiral crystals formed from the di-salt of tartaric acid in 1848. Theoretical approaches 2 to this question preceded experimental investigations until the last decade of the 20 th century, when several striking findings demonstrated ways in which enantioenrichment could be achieved through physical processes or chemical reactions. These exciting developments spurred extensive further experimental work so that, by end of the first decade of the 21 st century, the variety of reports in the literature prompted the observation that we have become "spoilt for choice" in approaches to rationalize the emergence of homochirality. Some of the earliest and most compelling theoretical proposals for asymmetric amplification of an initial small imbalance of enantiomers invoked autocatalytic reaction systems. The purpose of this review is to summarize studies aimed at understanding how autocatalytic systems may lead to the emergence of homochirality.