Book Summary and Reviews of Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Dream Count

A Novel

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • Published:
  • Mar 2025, 416 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A publishing event ten years in the making—a searing, exquisite new novel by the bestselling and award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists—the story of four women and their loves, longings, and desires.

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until—betrayed and brokenhearted—she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka's bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka's housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America—but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.

In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations of the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power. It confirms Adichie's status as one of the most exciting and dynamic writers on the literary landscape.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"In today's world, when people seem at once too cut off and too much in each other's business, readers will feel communion with these tense, put-upon, yet resilient women in crisis. Adichie weaves stories of heartbreak and travail that are timely, touching, and trenchant." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Adichie returns to fiction after more than a decade with this superb tale of the fleeting joys and abiding disappointments of four African women on both sides of the Atlantic...[She] riffs brilliantly on what feminism means to her characters and renders each woman's story in a distinctive voice…This is well worth the wait." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Every aspect of this transfixing, intimate, and astute group portrait is ablaze with scorching insights into the maddening absurdities and injustices that continue to plague women's lives...Adichie's magnificently vital, sharply forthright novel will be one of the year's most sought after and resounding titles." —Booklist (starred review)

This information about Dream Count was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Author Biography

Photo © Okey Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into more than fifty-five languages. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize; Half of a Yellow Sun, which was the recipient of the Women's Prize for Fiction "Best of the Best" award; Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck and the essays We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. Her most recent work is an essay about losing her father, Notes on Grief, and Mama's Sleeping Scarf, a children's book written as Nwa Grace-James. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.

... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Website

Name Pronunciation
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Chim-muh-MAHN-duh en-GOH-zee ah-DEECH-ee-(ay) The “ay” is soft, not quite a diphthong.

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