Geoffrey Drayton, "Mr. Dombey, The Zombie" (Barbados)

It’s December 11. Welcome back to the 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar—a literary globetrotting adventure featuring 25 stories from 25 different countries.

Our editor, Alberto Manguel, is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

Here he is on Geoffrey Drayton’s story, “Mr. Dombey, the Zombie”:

Born in the Barbados, Geoffrey Drayton explores in his writings, with humour and perspicacity, the intricate beliefs of Caribbean folklore. In spite of the brutal efforts of the slave traders to eradicate the African gods from the colonies, those ancient deities persisted and assumed other names to disguise their true identities. The Caribbean was (still is) inhabited by primeval ghosts, the loa and the zombies among them, and, like their fellow-creatures of flesh and blood, these ghosts can emigrate and lead ordinary lives in the humdrum English suburbs.

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What did you think of today's story? Use the hashtag #ssac2021 on Twitter and Instagram to check in with your fellow advent calendarians. And check back tomorrow for commentary on the next story!