Leptoquarks and the HERA High-$Q^{2}$ Events

The excess of high-Q2 events recently observed in deep-inelastic positron-proton scattering at HERA has refuelled speculations on physics beyond the standard model, in particular on low-mass leptoquark-type particles. We review the theoretical framework for leptoquark interactions, and their production and decay at HERA. Bounds on leptoquark masses and couplings, and implications on other experiments are also discussed.