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Hindustan Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Review: Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
It is clear that we live in uncertain times what with the climate crisis, an ongoing genocide, and expansionist warfare. And that's just the daily news cycle. This note of utter uncertainty characterises the opening of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Dream Count too. The US-based Nigerian writer's long-awaited return to literary fiction comes more than a decade after the widely acclaimed Americanah (2013). It begins with the pandemic and a 'new suspended life' in the midst of what her protagonist Chiamaka terms as the 'communal unknown'. Here, Zoom calls with family and friends become 'a melange of hallucinatory images' and one is constantly reminded of how even the innocent act of talking 'was to remember all that was lost'. Faced with a seeping hopelessness, Chiamaka begins to look up the men from her past, and the 'what could have been' scenarios, the dreams that never became a reality, the futures that never truly were. Thus, begins her 'dream count'. In the face of a 'freewheeling apocalypse', Adichie's protagonist is holding onto that which makes us all human -- the need to be heard and seen through the eyes of another sans judgement. The novel is divided into four main sections with each representing the perspective of one of the story's four central women characters: Chiamaka, her closest friend Zikora, her cousin Omelogor, and her housekeeper Kadiatou. The lives of these four women and all that they have loved and lost is the focus of a narrative that embeds political critique in this representation of desire. What begins as an examination of love in its various shapes and forms, takes on the tone of a social commentary on the 21st century woman's (over)reliance on romantic love. The first partner that Chiamaka's ruminates over is Darnell, whom she calls 'the Denzel Washington of academia'. As Adichie's protagonist comes from a wealthy family, Darnell consistently makes her aware of her privilege vis a vis the poor African migrant struggling for survival in the urban landscapes of the 'Global North'. What follows is a biting satirical portrait of Western academia with Chiamaka calling out its tribal ways and liberal posturing. While meeting Darnell's friends, she notes how they are unable 'to feel admiration' and liberally overuse terms and phrases such as 'problematic' and 'the ways in which'. One of them, Charlotte, 'spoke of Africa as a place where her friends' presumably all white had 'worked'. An Africa 'full of white people all toiling unthanked in the blazing sun'. In a famous TED talk, Adichie had once shared how her 'roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story, there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals.' It would seem that Adichie is responding to this single story throughout Dream Count. A publisher tells Chiamaka, an aspiring author, to work on something on the Congo before starting her travel memoir, adding that 'Somalia and Sudan could work too'. Chiamaka grasps that the publishing world is viewing her, a woman of African descent, as an 'interpreter of struggles'. Adichie has long contended with the Western gaze on the African diaspora and its 'single story of Africa'. Here too, she critiques the Anglophone publishing world and Western academia's fetishization of Africa and Africans. However, as the narrative progresses, her critique of American 'woke' culture actually does come off as problematic – to use the term that Chiamaka accuses Darnell and his academic circle of overusing. It is through the brash and independent Omelogor that Adichie voices her disdain for liberal America's sense of entitlement and the 'provincial certainty' with which its members operate. Her experience as a graduate student in the US is fraught with encounters that make her wary of expressing any opinion that runs contrary to that which is perceived as ideologically acceptable. It might be useful to note here that Adichie has, in the past, been called out for TERF adjacent remarks and that she has also previously strongly condemned cancel culture in her writing. While the strength of Adichie's narrative lies in how she blends social and political critique through a multi-layered story, it is precisely this which also causes the book to lag in parts. For instance, the arc of Kadiatou's narrative is not entirely convincing. In her Author's Note Adichie shares how this part of the novel was inspired by real life events, in particular, the case of Nafissatou Diallo – a Guinean immigrant, like Kadiatou – who had accused a guest of sexual assault at the hotel where she worked. The accused was IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Adichie notes that she wished to 'right a wrong' through this story. She also shifts to a third person narrative voice here from the first person that she used for both Chiamaka and Omelogor. This creates a distance that doesn't quite work. Indeed, Kadiatou's section and Zikora's too come across as superficial interludes. Dream Count begins with an examination of romantic love as perhaps an extension of the capitalist world view offset by community ties, such as that of sisterhood that may seem to fray at times but remain steady when the need arises. American liberal academia and the publishing world's 'incivility of quiet evil' is explicitly critiqued. 'We are all defining our worlds with words from America,' says Omelogor. There is no arguing with that. Adichie's return to literary fiction does have its moments. In the end, though, it has to be said that, unlike her earlier works, Dream Count suffers from a sad lack of nuance. Simar Bhasin is a literary critic and research scholar who lives in Delhi. Her essay 'A Qissa of Resistance: Desire and Dissent in Selma Dabbagh's Short Fiction' was awarded 'Highly Commended' by the Wasafiri Essay Prize 2024.
TimesLIVE
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- TimesLIVE
Taking a bite out of Chimamanda's buttered toast
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 4th Estate When reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's latest offering Dream Count I was reminded of a favourite scene of mine in one of the Narnia books I read as a child. In the scene, the four siblings who must navigate a talking lion, a witch and a precarious wardrobe are so starved that they start craving buttered toast. One of the blandest foods to crave but at that moment of having no other option, even toast would suffice. I also found myself salivating at the thought of sinking my teeth into warm, crunchy bread that crackled at every bite. That hearty scent of rich butter all washed down with orange juice, hot chocolate or tea. I was also with very few options and immediately became enamoured with the hungry siblings and their plight. To this day, buttered toast is a comfort food I always return to. Not as a breakfast or 'girl dinner' but rather as a bite packed with memories that make me feel warm. In Dream Count, Adichie tells the story of four women interlinked by the same desires. Men. The book was inspired by the passing of Adichie's mother and her curiosity about how she would relate to one of the characters, Kadiotou. While this might be an ensemble, Kadiotou's harrowing story is only a common thread that pops up between the other characters. Specifically Chiamaka, who dominates the tale. She and her best friend Zikora have first-person narration, while Kadiotou and Chiamaka's acerbic cousin, Omelogor, have their experiences narrated to us. Through their journeys, we learn a lot about their lives in the way that Adichie has done in books like Half of a Yellow Sun. Chiamaka is a frustrating mess to whom many reading the pages might relate. You either know of a Chiamaka or you have a friend like her. Something of a Nigerian-born Carrie Bradshaw meets Emma Woodhouse, Chiamaka is a funny mess to follow. Particularly when it comes to her ill-fated relationship with her hotep (term typically used for black men who are Afrocentric to a regressive degree) boyfriend, Darnell. Through dinners and dates, we see how Darnell posits himself as a revolutionary intellectual but continues to disappoint Chiamaka, who places a lot of her self-worth on the men she dates. Even in the relationship's end, where Darnell overreacts about Chiamaka ordering a mimosa in a swanky French restaurant in Paris. She dodges his hysteria and starts a relationship with a married man that dissolves as quickly as it started. However, it does give her insight into interracial dating, but does not remedy the assimilation she has to perform when dating men from different backgrounds. Her confidants, Zikora and Omelogor, act as powerful gal pals who are resolute in their disagreements yet cautious enough not to hurt Chiamaka's feelings. Zikora is a golden child who eventually falls for the good guy type in Kwame, before their relationship fizzles out when both parties fail to effectively communicate their thoughts on her pregnancy. This is where the book shines the most as we get left with Zikora's isolation, her perseverance through a pregnancy she was quietly excited about and concludes with endless attempts to keep in touch with Kwame. In what Adichie describes as an 'unfinished dying', the labour of falling out of love and in connection with her soul mate is heartbreaking and nearly makes the book a literary realism masterpiece were it not for the cracks that start to show. Kadiotou's story is told in third-person narrative because of Adichie's respect for the real-life events it was inspired by. However, Omelogor, who runs a microblog, is also not given the honour of telling her own tale. As one of the more exciting women in terms of her world views, this makes Omelogor an anticlimactic character to read about. With Adichie employing the same linguistics when writing in Zikora and Chiamaka's voices, it often feels like they play big brother over Kadiotou and Omelogor's lives as there are no distinct differences in how she retells each woman's tale. Their passivity also makes them feel like one woman in four different versions of a Marvel multiverse, à la their very own What If series. This is where Adichie becomes a buttered toast author. There are no surprises with butter toast, and neither are there any with Adichie's book. You know what you are going to get: page after page of women pining over men, their mothers pining over grandkids and their female relatives pining over their dowager lives. It is a void obsessed with women who are stereotypes; the flighty columnist, the pregnant, shrewd lawyer, the middle-aged woman obsessed with pornography and the poverty-stricken outlier who is fodder for the haves and the have-nots. Perhaps fuelled by being a member of the queer community, there is nothing new to Dream Count. Nothing profound in its obsession with the mundane and its characters who are not daring enough to try something new. In a failure to explore the feelings an desires of women in their forties to fifties, Dream Count is a perfect read for chick-lit lovers who wish to be affirmed in their beliefs with the promise of excellent prose.
Hindustan Times
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Book Review: Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie paints a true picture of grief through immigrant lives
Since her dazzling debut, Purple Hibiscus, announced her as a literary force in 2003, author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has worn many hats — novelist, essayist, cultural critic. Yet each of her new works manages to somehow deepen our understanding of her unique voice. With her latest work, Dream Count, Adichie returns not just to fiction but also to the intimate terrain of memory, identity, and grief; threading these themes through the lives of four immigrant women. At its heart, her new book is a quiet powerhouse. It is Adichie, doing what she does best: capturing the inner weather of her characters with prose so elegant it almost glides past you until it punches you in the gut. The novel unfolds through four interwoven narratives. There's Chiamaka (Chia) — a Nigerian travel writer marooned in the US by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic — but we quickly realise that marooned isn't quite the right word. Chia chooses to stay, clinging to the messy safety of disconnection, even as her family pleads for her return. Then there's Zikora – Chia's steely friend and a successful lawyer – juggling courtrooms and personal silence. Omelogor, Chia's cousin – trades finance for academia, chasing a degree — and goes for something like a reinvention in a landscape that rarely offers clean slate for women. Finally, there's Kadiatou – Chia's Guinean housekeeper – whose story is reminiscent of real-life events relating to the emotionally thunderous case of a New York hotel housekeeper named Nafissatou Diallo. Through these women, Adichie crafts a kaleidoscope of the overlooked immigrant experience during the pandemic. The lives of these women overlap in subtle and profound ways, echoing the novel's deeper concern with how we connect and disconnect, how we remember and forget, and most piercingly, how we grieve! Adichie has spoken of this book as being 'really about my mother,' and it shows. There's a personal weight humming beneath each chapter, not in overt autobiographical detail, but in the novel's aching awareness of loss and the disorienting stillness that often follows. Set against the global stillness of the pandemic, Dream Count becomes both a time capsule and an elegy. The book pulses with contradictions of real life as moments of loneliness are laced with humour and silence holds space for unsaid love. The trauma often hides in the small, quiet things such as a dinner left uneaten, or a voicemail never returned. But perhaps the most remarkable achievement is how this work of writing sneaks up on you. It's not loud, not even plot-driven in the traditional sense yet by the end you realise something profound has shifted within the characters, and maybe within yourself as well. Title: Dream Count Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Publisher: HarperCollins Price: ₹599
CBC
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
How Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie subverts expectations of traditional Nigerian women
WARNING: This article and audio interview may affect those who have experienced sexual violence or know someone affected by it. The wait is over for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's hugely anticipated return to fiction. Known for her detailed representation of Nigerian women and culture, Dream Count follows four women who live large on the page and resonated deeply with two Canada Reads alumni, Kudakwashe Rutendo and Mirian Njoh. Adichie is the bestselling author of novels Purple Hibiscus, Half of A Yellow Sun and Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 2013. Since then, Adichie has turned to nonfiction, writing powerful essays that became Ted Talks and short books, including We Should All Be Feminists, which was sampled in Beyoncé's song Flawless and inspired a T-shirt from Dior. Dream Count is Adichie's return to fiction after 12 years and it weaves the perspectives of four women, moving between Nigeria, Guinea and the United States. Rutendo and Njoh reunited on The Next Chapter with Antonio Michael Downing to discuss the complex feelings and reflections the women of Adichie's fiction brought up. For those that have been living under a literary rock, what can you tell us about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie? Kudakwashe Rutendo: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a polarizing Nigerian American writer. Her breakout Americanah made huge waves in the literary world and then it was felt like Americanah, Half of the Yellow Sun, her prose is singular and she manages to invoke so much of being Nigerian American, or just being Nigerian into her writing and showing the culture and viewing it in an honest way where you're not coddling it — you're showing its best parts, you're critiquing it. I think that's the honest way to love if you're showing the deficits and the whole parts all in one and she manages to illuminate that in her prose and in her work. And in a subtle way as well where the culture is the writing. She's been on the scene forever and we've been waiting for this book forever. She manages to invoke so much of being Nigerian American into her writing ... in an honest way. Mirian, there are four women in this book. I've heard it described as four interlocking novellas. Each section is about one of these women. First up, we meet Chiamaka and as the title suggests, she's tallying up her dream count, the men that she's loved and lost. What kind of entry did she give you into this novel? Mirian Njoh: I think she was a great opener because I think was the strongest voice to me. Her story stuck with me the greatest and it's interesting 'cause each of them has different themes that stood out very strongly and hers always seemed to me to be the idea of pursuit. On a superficial level, she's a travel writer, so there's just a level of pursuit and going to different places and exploring and capturing and documenting. But she also has that same fervor for seeking and pursuit in her personal life and in the loves that she's seeking. And it's interesting how she flips the notion of a body count, which is something that's often weaponized against women, particularly, and she turns it into a dream count when she recalls the past loves of her life and the love that she's been seeking in these people. Three of the main characters move between Nigeria and America as Chimamanda Adichie does herself. The three women are connected by friendship and family and they're all struggling to some extent with this same stuff. They're all trying to find something, some degree of being seen and almost always by men because they see each other really well. What brings those three characters together in terms of what they're seeking? MN: What you're saying is they're seeking to be, to love, to be loved and to be seen. And I think that is kind of the beauty of the way that their stories are interwoven and I think that their stories are truly dependent on each other, they each sustain each other. Because when you look outside of the bubble of these three women and the safety, the love, the vulnerability and just the rawness that exists between them, they are truly themselves with each other. But then you look at their chosen family dynamic and then you look at their biological family dynamics or even their cultural dynamics and you see how they can't fit. Some of them are actively avoiding their parents and siblings, actively avoiding their aunts. Even with one of the characters who leaves Nigeria and she seeks respite in the U.S., ironically enough, she doesn't find it. They're seeking to be, to love, to be loved and to be seen. - Mirian Njoh There's a clash here because they are essentially very non-traditional women who are trying to do a very traditional thing, which is fall in love, get married, have a baby, things like things around that. KR: I also wonder if this might be a new traditional way to be a woman because I'd also say that a lot of their values were distinct from just clear cut Western values. It was interesting. One of my cousins got traditionally married so it was funny for me weighing the values of that. There is a difference. I feel like these women go against the traditional grain in many ways and I think they also subvert the Western grain as well because they're Nigerian. There's a class thing happening here … but there's also a gender thing going on here, right? KR: I don't think we can talk about being a traditional Igbo culture, but also any African culture without getting into gender politics because they're so ingrained in gendered roles and gendered expectations and even in this book, it's a huge aspect. And I think it's often what the women are rebelling against or sometimes falling into because it's their safety. It's what you understand. I think it's often what the women are rebelling against or sometimes falling into because it's their safety. MN: It's interesting if we look at our outlier Kadiatou and we think about gender because on one hand, I would say she is, in the most extreme sense, subject to gender practices because she undergoes female genital mutilation. But then that also ends up being part of the key that gets her to this next phase of her life, this thing that in a way is like her American Dream. But then the ironic thing is that once again, that whole dynamic of her gender comes into play when she ends up embroiled in a sexual assault scandal. Her identity and character is assassinated and she is called so many things, a con artist, a prostitute. And we see the system really ring her out. Do you also seek a "merging of souls", as Chiamaka says? KR: I think that everyone should seek fulfillment and I say this knowing that I don't believe that… Also, I don't think it was the message of the book. What really got to me is this idea of a dream count. I was like, it's just not disqualifying the affections that we felt. I think oftentimes you're focused on ends like it had to have been a relationship or it had to have been fulfilling, or we have to have dated or just all these things that are so inconsequential. For me, it was like all the things that make you tender, you should honour them. All the people who have given you any tenderness. WATCH | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Bookends with Mattea Roach: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CBC
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Mother-daughter relationships shape Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's return to fiction
In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's latest novel, Dream Count, her character Chiamaka is found alone in the pandemic, reflecting on her past relationships that didn't go the distance. She looks back at all the men she's been with, not as a body count, but as a dream count, as in the dreams of a life together never realized. Despite some of the questionable men of her past, Chiamaka is still holding out hope for a relationship in which she is fully known by someone else — and tries to learn about herself from the frictions of her entanglements. For Adichie, the isolation of COVID was the perfect backdrop for Chiamaka to undergo this introspection. "It makes you aware of your own mortality," said Adichie on Bookends with Mattea Roach. "It gives you an opportunity to look inward in a way that ordinary life just doesn't." However, the idea of being known by someone else can be elusive, she said, because it's almost impossible to totally know oneself. In her own life, the sudden death of her father during lockdown showed her versions of herself she didn't recognize. She explained that she saw herself as someone who reacts to difficult situations by "going cold" — but upon hearing that her father died, she was "taken aback by the melodrama" of her response. "I threw myself down on the ground and I was pounding, pounding the floor and did not realize I was doing this. I was just so overtaken by the devastation of the news." "I was surprised that I had reacted in that way," she said. "And so I started thinking about how much I knew myself and the idea that we can surprise ourselves and we do surprise ourselves." Coming back to fiction The bestselling author of novels Purple Hibiscus, Half of A Yellow Sun and Americanah, Adichie was born in Nigeria and now splits her time between there and the United States. Americanah won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 2013, but since then, Adichie has turned to nonfiction, writing powerful essays that became Ted Talks and short books, including We Should All Be Feminists, which was sampled by in Beyoncé's song Flawless and inspired a t-shirt from Dior. Dream Count is Adichie's return to fiction after 12 years and it weaves the perspectives of four women, moving between Nigeria, Guinea and the United States. She dedicates the book to her mother, who died in March 2021. And whereas her grief for her father left her grappling for language, she said that losing her mother actually brought her back to fiction. "You're so unwilling to accept something that it then forces a different kind of eloquence on you," Adichie said. "I really think that my mother, in a kind of strange and spiritual way, I feel as though she kind of helped me start writing because she realized that I might go mad if I didn't." You're so unwilling to accept something that it then forces a different kind of eloquence on you. Unwittingly, Dream Count became a novel about the power of platonic love, celebrating female friendships and mother-daughter relationships. "I did not even realize how much of the book was about mothers and daughters until I was almost done and I went back and read what I had," said Adichie. "My mother's spirit is here, I thought. In a more prosaic way, I'm dealing with my issues." The mothers and daughters in Dream Count love each other very much — but sometimes don't understand each other — yet are there to support one another when times are difficult. "Part of my grieving process has been regret because I think that there are times when I was short with my mother in ways that I did not need to be and it made me think about how mother-daughter relationships can be much more complicated and sometimes unnecessarily thorny than daughter-father relationships." Lessons from motherhood Adichie also now has a daughter and twin boys, an experience that has taught her a lot about herself. "I've learned that I'm not endlessly patient," she said, laughing, and explained how powerful her feelings for her children are — a love and obsession that she could never have imagined. But beyond that love for them, she's also gained a level of uncertainty that fuels her. "I think I'm less smug and also slightly less sure," she said. "That has been good for me. Even just as a writer, there's a kind of uncertainty that I think feeds creativity." "I'm still self-confident and I don't apologize for that. But maybe it's that terror at the heart of loving children. I'm just constantly worried about my children. I think it does something to you and I think I like what it's done for me." While becoming a mother did help Adichie get closer to knowing herself, she's still uncertain about who she really is — and so are the characters in Dream Count. "It just feels to me that it's something that we will always long for and never quite get there," she said. "But maybe the longing is the point."
