
Twelve years after ‘Americanah’, Nigerian Writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie returns with ‘Dream Count’ and a wave of emotional resonance.
In an interview with ARISE NEWS on Thursday ahead of the Nigerian leg of her global book tour, Adichie admitted she remains genuinely surprised by the scale of reader response.
“It’s not false modesty,” she said. “I’m shocked that my book events sell out in 24 hours and that 1,000 people are willing to pay to see me. That connection is lovely.”
Adichie’s ‘Dream Count’, released in March, is her first novel since the passing of both her parents. She spoke about how grief changed her identity and how writing became a vessel of survival. “I adored my parents,” she said. “My sense of self was rooted in being the daughter of Grace and James. When they died, something shifted permanently.”
While not explicitly basing characters on her mother, Adichie believes ‘Dream Count’ carries her mother’s spirit. “It’s hard to explain intellectually,” she noted. “But I know my mother helped me through the process. She guided me.”
Much of ‘Dream Count’ explores themes of love, memory, and justice including a character inspired by the real-life case of Nafissatou Diallo, the hotel worker who accused French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault. For Adichie, retelling that story through fiction was about restoring dignity. “She was reduced to a headline,” Adichie said. “We heard about his ambitions, his career but with her, it was all negativity and suspicion. I wanted to give her back some humanity.”
While her international tour has drawn packed audiences, Adichie is equally passionate about engaging readers back home. Launching the ‘Dream Count’ Nigeria tour in Lagos, she dismissed the idea that Nigerians don’t read.
“There’s a strong reading community here,” she insisted. “Young people, book clubs, very enthusiastic readers. The problem isn’t literacy, it’s affordability and access.”
To counter that, she retains Nigerian publishing rights to ensure her books are produced at a price accessible to local readers. “Bringing in foreign editions doesn’t make sense. We need to make books available and affordable.”
Still, she acknowledges a wider cultural shift.
“We’ve embraced a kind of crass materialism,” she observed. “It’s not just poverty. There are other poor countries where people still value education and ideas. I think years of poor leadership and military rule have damaged our collective psyche.”
Adichie also pushed back on easy language around healing saying, “I’m uncomfortable with words like ‘healing.’ What does it even mean?” she asked. “Maybe losing my mother forced me to make peace with the earlier loss of my father. But I still struggle.”
She used the moment to advocate for expressing appreciation while people are alive. “We should give people their flowers when they’re here. Not just at funerals. My mother helped so many people and never heard their gratitude until after she was gone.”
While her Nigerian tour is going in Abuja, Enugu, and Nsukka her hometown. But Lagos, where she now lives part-time, she asserted it was always going to be the first stop. “Lagos is the beating heart of Nigeria,” she said. “And it’s home for me.”
As for what to expect at the events? “We’ll have music, poetry, spoken word, and I’ll do a reading. And then we’ll talk about everything: grief, reading, literature, dreams.”
“The tickets, of course, sold out in less than a day.”
Erizia Rubyjeana
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