Autumn 2025: Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Translation note: Nwanyi ib m translates roughly into ‘my fellow woman.’ It is a term of endearment. 

“I have always longed to be known, truly known by another human being. Sometimes we live for years with yearnings that we cannot name.” 

With these ponderings, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie opens Dream Count (2025), a novel exploring the meaning of true happiness. Adichie has gained global acclaim through novels such as Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), Americanah (2013), and her essay We Should All Be Feminists (2024), which has made her a voice in the literary world. Now she returns with a character-driven novel. 

With a mix of sensations and scenes, Dream Count defies conventional storytelling. As the New York Times states, the novel is “more jotting, than plotting”, with no clear resolution. It is an interconnected, polyphonic narrative centred on four different African women living in America. Each woman has her own story. Set during the Covid-19 pandemic, this forces each woman to reflect on their life as they enters a new isolated existence where the world seems to have paused. 

There’s Chiamaka, a self-proclaimed travel writer who hails from a wealthy family living in Maryland.  Zikora, who is professionally and financially successful but seems to be falling short on her family’s expectations. Kadiatou is a housekeeper who works for Chia while raising her daughter alone. Lastly, Omelogor, Chiamaka’s ambitious cousin, quits her job as a banker in Nigeria to pursue a graduate degree in pornography and launches an advice website called ‘For Men Only’, where she gives men anonymous advice on how to treat women right. 

The book’s theme is immediately front and centre through the dedication to Adichie’s mother, who passed away in March 2021. In the author’s note, she describes that in the wake of her mother’s passing, a powerful longing to turn back time was left behind, an inability to face the truth, a fierce apathy toward acceptance, and a fear of finality. Above all, it left behind a never-ending feeling of rage and sorrow, each feeling so perfectly tangled with the other. It was impossible to see where one ended and the other started. This raw emotion shapes the entire story. The novel is abeautiful meditation on the inner struggles, dreams, and mistakes we make as humans in our quest for proper connection.  

Each of the four women yearns for a love that goes beyond the simple, shallow level of affection or societal expectation of how a traditional love should be. All four seek a profound emotional companionship where they can fully be themselves, understood, seen, and accepted without having to deny a part of themselves or take up less space. Motherhood is portrayed as multifaceted and complex. Instead of presenting it as a single experience, each perspective examines and represents the ways it can redefine or fracture a sense of self. They confront the burdens of silence, unspoken obligation, and patriarchal expectations. This tension between maternal expectation and self-determination plays out differently for each woman in the story.  

As I read the story, I could not help but notice how each woman functions as a portrait of what women must negotiate or surrender to survive the impossible societal standards imposed on us.  Adichie builds these portraits not just as entangled lives but as variations on the question: how much of ourselves do we give up or hide to be loved and accepted? Or more simply, to be left in peace to be who we are. Adichie doesn’t offer escape but holds up a mirror. 

The novel begins with Chiamaka, who, like many of us during the pandemic, is forced into isolation. Her section unfolds through a series of Zoom calls with her family in Nigeria, as well asfragments of memories. “Formless days bled into one another, and I had the sensation of time turning inward”, she reflects. It tells you everything about the novel ahead.  

The stillness enforced by the lockdown compels her to confront all the lies she has told herself to stay in an unhappy relationship. Her so-called “Dream Count,” a reshaping of the misogynistic term “body count,” becomes a rebellion to let those connections disappear into silence. Chia’s awakening becomes a mirror to our own lives. Reminding us that, in a culture that rewards silence and self-deprivation, sincerity has become its own form of disobedience. From Chia’s solitude, Adichie turns to Zikora, where this silence takes on another shape. This silence is not chosen, but taught. It echoes through generations of women told to endure to be worthy. 

Zikora’s section opens during the early labour crisis. Having followed the script of conventional success: “She had always imagined her future in a vivid timeline – first a lucrative and prestigious job, then a splashy Catholic wedding, followed shortly by two children, or maybe three.”. She realises how easy it is to confuse fulfilment with achievement. One of the most powerful narratives Adichie writes in this section is that Zikora’s culture has taught her to suppress her pain. “Hold yourself together”, “Don’t show pain”, “Be strong,” and “Bear it, that is what it means to be a woman.” These are all messages her mother reinforced.  

At a decisive moment, Zikora allows herself to cry, creating a narrative different from the one she was taught to follow. She shows her vulnerability instead of staying stoic. In doing this, she breaks the cycle of inherited generational pain, while still feeling a deep sense of guilt for it. It is deeply touching to see that vulnerability is presented as a power. The scene doubles as a quiet reflection on a world that rewards apathy and treats sensitivity as weakness. 

What this does is continue the exploration of how women must silence parts of themselves, or their humanity, to sustain certain relationships or fit the convention. It also shows how we measure our worth by predetermined patriarchal timelines: getting married by a certain age, getting children, and surrendering our careers, sometimes to our own detriment. While Zikora’s story resists through vulnerability, Kadiatou’s story speaks out against the oppression when silence is imposed.  

The most heartbreaking narrative of all happens in the third section. This narrative is not about emotional abandonment, but actual bodily violation, systematic oppression, and injustice. Kadiatou’s story shows what is taken from women. It painfully sketches how the world strips away dignity and privacy when they dare to speak, and yet how tenderness still stays even in the face of trauma. Her story is inspired by the real-life case of Nafissatou Diallo, a Guinean immigrant working as a hotel maid in New York, who accuses a wealthy guest of assault. Adichie feels protective ofher, as stated in her Author’s note. Although Diallo was very different from her, she was also a West African woman living in America, so she felt protective of Diallo.  It was a creative impulse to ‘write’ a wrong and create a character “as a gesture of returned dignity”. The aftermath of the incident stripped away what little privacy and safety Kadiatou had built for her and her daughter. Journalists follow her and disturb the privacy of her home:   

“Kadiatou, open, please! Kadiatou, we want to get your story! She walked very slowly, as silently as she could, to the peephole. She could see four people, two holding cameras. A sudden banging on the door made her jump.” 

Her trauma is not her own anymore; it is a public spectacle.  Kadi faces the challenges and vulnerabilities of being a female immigrant, a person of colour, and a working-class individual. Her disobedience lies in the softer acts of connection. She shows up for her daughter each day and refuses to let the assault taint her. Her maternal role is her core motivation. The strength in this part of the story is the focus on Kadi, instead of the rapist, the act of giving a voice and a face to so many unheard voices. Keeping the focus on Kadi and her resilience makes for a more well-executed narrative in which sexual violence is a core theme. Instead of lending credence to the predator’s perspective, we get to hear from Kadi herself. 

Additionally, Kadi´s section provides a breath of fresh air in pacing. While there is beauty in the description of the inner world of the four women, the stream-of-consciousness type style became overwhelming at times. It was jarring, at times, to feel so distant from a book which explores themes that resonate so thoroughly with my own experiences as a woman. Kadi’s section, not so much in subject matter, but through something more tangible: an actual plot. Yet it feels challenging to give this as a simple criticism. Dream Count deliberately resists the plot in favour of its characters, a choice that makes it a remarkable novel but also makes the reading experience more challenging than it needs to be. 

Finally, Adichie turns to Omelogor. Her voice enters with wit and confidence, showing a different way of living. Her story highlights the double-edged sword women often face: being ambitious and career-driven is perceived as unfeminine, while desiring stability is viewed as unambitious. Omelogor is a successful banker-turned-blogger situated in Adjua. Unlike Kadiatou, she is wealthy and fiercely independent. Yet beneath this relative privilege lies a constant tension. The tension we feel in our own lives about our choices and their consequences. There is a constant push and pull between what she wants from her life and what her family back home expects of her. Omelogor’s disobedience is shown by her refusal to apologise for wanting a life that colours outside the lines. I found myself both admiring and moved by her; it is truly a good representation of the quiet cost of wanting more than the world allows us. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hanna Goemans (she/her) is an enthusiastic writer and avid reader. She is currently a student at Utrecht University, following the MA program Literature Today. In her undergraduate studies, she specialised in English Literature. Her work focuses mainly on the interaction between emotion and the representation of the cultural landscape. When not immersed in archives, she enjoys exploring nature and discovering the poetry of everyday landscapes.