When literary icon Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie welcomes me into her Baltimore home, twins gurgling at her feet, the domestic bliss belies the storms weathered to reach this moment. The Nigerian-American author of Americanah erupts in her signature full-throated laugh as she settles in to discuss her long-awaited new novel, Dream Count, and the tidal forces – both intimate and global – that shaped its creation.
Emerging from the Shadows
For Adichie, the eleven years since her last work of fiction were marked by seismic personal losses and a bruising encounter with “cancel culture” that left her shaken. “There was a time when I wondered if I would ever write again,” she admits, eyes darkening at the memory. The deaths of her beloved parents – father in 2020, mother just months later – plunged Adichie into an existential crisis. Compounded by what she calls the “cannibalistic” backlash to her viral comments on gender identity, the formidable author found herself creatively paralyzed.
I spent years feeling cast out from my creative self, unable to reach that place inside me that imagines and dreams.
Yet in her darkest days, Adichie slowly rediscovered the spark. It began while writing her 2021 meditation on grief, Notes on Grief, which allowed her to unlock emotions with a depth she recognized from fiction writing. The night her mother died, Adichie poured her anguish into a scorching essay entitled “It Is Obscene,” lambasting the “sanctimony” and “chokehold of conformity” that defines modern discourse.
Some saw it as a grief-fueled misstep. For Adichie, it was a turning point – an insistence on nuance, intellectual courage, and open debate that animate both her activism and storytelling. “I’m deeply uncomfortable with the self-censorship I see among young people today,” she says, shaking her head. “This idea that we must never say anything that might offend.”
Rewriting the Rules
If Dream Count is any indication, Adichie is done self-censoring. The novel weaves together the intersecting lives of four unforgettable Nigerian women, grappling with love, ambition, the sorrow and joy of the female body, in her signature irreverent, clear-eyed prose. At its heart is Chiamaka (Chia), a travel writer reflecting on her own unlived lives – the “dream count” of missed opportunities haunting so many women.
For Adichie, exploring the “gritty reality” of women’s bodily experiences, from fibroids to traumatic birth, was a way of confronting taboos head-on. “It’s surprising to me that even now, with all our feminist discourse, there’s still so much about having a female body that isn’t discussed openly,” she muses. “But these things utterly shape women’s lives.”
Just as daring is Adichie’s fictionalized treatment of the 2011 Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal, in which she imagines the inner world of Nafissatou Diallo – the immigrant hotel housekeeper who accused the IMF chief of sexual assault. The case still haunts Adichie as a symbol of how women’s credibility is inextricably tied to their identity.
The message was clear: If you’re a woman claiming sexual abuse, you’d better be a perfect victim. An angel. Especially if you’re poor, especially if you’re an immigrant.
Hope in the Darkness
For all its unflinching social commentary, Dream Count vibrates with a sense of sisterhood, mischief, and stubborn optimism about the power of women to lift each other up. One character secretly siphons funds from her corrupt employer to bankroll business grants for underserved women. Another pens cheeky missives to confused men on an advice site, steering them toward healthier models of masculinity.
It’s the kind of sly, subversive empowerment Adichie is known for – a conviction that change happens not just through activism and argument, but in the radical, intimate act of storytelling itself. “I still believe that fiction can be a powerful tool for shaping how we see the world,” she says. “For making us walk in the shoes of people very different from ourselves.”
That belief has only deepened in our era of division, disinformation, and rising authoritarianism worldwide. Having seen Nigeria’s fragile democracy buckle under military rule in her youth, Adichie is troubled by what she views as a global democratic recession, accelerated by the “cult-like loyalty” of Trump devotees in the U.S.
Growing up, I was obsessed with the Nazis. I always wondered, ‘How could people have fallen for this?’ Now, I see how. Sometimes it takes so very little.
Yet even in her darkest musings, Adichie’s faith in humanity – in the potential for people to choose empathy over fear – remains her North Star. It’s there in Dream Count‘s indelible final image: a woman stepping bravely into an uncertain future, daring to dream new dreams. A testament to resilience, to the power of women’s stories to light the way forward.
As our conversation winds down, Adichie grows reflective. “I’m a different person now,” she says softly, glancing at a photo of her parents. “I’m surprised by how little I really knew myself before.”
Then her eyes meet mine, blazing with the conviction that has always defined her. The determination to keep probing, questioning, and illuminating the world in all its complexity – no matter the backlash, no matter the cost. Because that, she knows, is the only way we grow. The only way we change.
