Dream Count
$38.00
Item#: 9781039056251
Available: 5
On Order: 0
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GLOBE AND MAIL BESTSELLER • LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER • FINALIST FOR THE 2025 ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION • LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION • LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD • A Heather’s Pick • NPR’s Books We Love • Named a Best Book of 2025 by The New Yorker • Barnes & Noble • Kirkus • Financial Times • The Washington Post • The Irish Times • The Observer • The Guardian
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.
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.
Review Quotes
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GLOBE AND MAIL BESTSELLER • LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER • FINALIST FOR THE 2025 ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION • LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION • LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD • A Heather’s Pick • NPR’s Books We Love • Named a Best Book of 2025 by The New Yorker • Barnes & Noble • Kirkus • Financial Times • The Washington Post • The Irish Times • The Observer • The Guardian
“Innovative. . . . Adichie’s attention to hierarchies of language, the misuses of jargon, is one of her superpowers. . . . Dream Count, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s first novel in a dozen years, is dreamy indeed. An accumulation of scenes and sensations, cloudlike in their contour, floating this way and that against the backdrop of the pandemic that messed up sleep—and time itself—for us all.” —Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times
“Expansive. . . . The lives depicted in Dream Count are linked without being integrated, like tapestries on the four walls of a room. . . . The four women are sympathetic allies, but they tend to be better at diagnosing each others’ problems than facing their own. That’s a very recognizable flaw, and Ms. Adichie treats it as humanely as the rest of this tender and wistful novel.” —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
“More than 10 years on from Americanah, this latest book is infused with something new and distinctive in Adichie’s prose: a crystal-clear purposefulness, moral and furious. . . . What elevates the story is, as ever, the emotional acuity of Adichie’s writing. . . . In her ‘Author’s Note’, Adichie admits to seeking ‘to “write” a wrong in the balance of stories’, offering ‘clear-eyed realism, but touched by tenderness.’ Realism, yes, but tenderness most of all.” —Shahidha Bari, Financial Times
“Dream Count . . . is elevated to something singular through the incisive commentary on race, gender and class that readers have come to love from Adichie. . . . Dream Count is a satisfying read that is both comforting in its familiarity and discomfiting in its fresh take on broken dreams and hearts.” —Winnipeg Free Press
“Dream Count feels like a homecoming. The Nigerian author’s first work of longform fiction in over a decade reminds us of the sharp wisdom and sturdy empathy that have made her one of the most celebrated voices in fiction. . . . Dream Count succeeds because every page is suffused with empathy, and because Adichie’s voice is as forthright and clarifying as ever. Reading about each woman, we begin to forget that we’re separate from these characters or that their lives belong to fiction.” —Helen Wieffering, Associated Press
“A rich, complicated book that spans continents and classes. . . . Deeply compelling. . . . Adichie’s descriptions of these relationships are infused with comedy and pathos and a touch of romantic suspense. . . . Dream Count compels us to acknowledge, once again, that no story is ever just a single story.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“Composed of the interlocking stories of four women, Chiamaka (‘Chia’), Zikora, Omelogor and Kadiatou, it is also quintessential Adichie: ambitious, astute and powered by an accumulation of feather-light sentences that build to devastating weight.” —Sara Collins, The Guardian
“At times, Dream Count reads like a feminist War and Peace. . . . Suffused with truth, wit, and compassion, this is a magnificent novel that understands the messiness of human motivation and is courageous enough to ask difficult questions. It made me feel frustrated about the world but very good about the state of fiction.” —The Times
“Arguably Adichie’s best title yet. Having read and loved her previous novels, I was eagerly anticipating the release of Dream Count. Happily, it didn’t disappoint.” —The Independent
“Entertaining and compassionate, with gorgeous touches of life.” —The Irish Times
“A beautifully written triumph.” —London Evening Standard
“This is a complex, multi-layered beauty of a book. It is deeply and richly feminist. . . . It explores big themes—misogyny, masculinity, race, colonialism, cultural relativism, the abuse of power, both personal and institutional—but it does so subtly, almost imperceptibly. The book’s lessons on life and the world we inhabit are not thrust didactically at the reader but considered through the profoundly human experiences of her characters. . . . Dream Count is an extraordinary novel.” —The New Statesman
“Luxuriously layered. It’s the return of a literary titan.” —The Telegraph
“Love, death, motherhood—it’s all here, and few can handle it as capably as Adichie.” —GQ
“With one of the most anticipated books of the year, the iconic and legendary Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a writer of astonishing power. Her latest novel—already longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025—is a captivating exploration of love, identity, and the complexity of human relationships.” —Glamour UK
“The novel is an unflinching observation on the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power.” —Harper’s Bazaar
“Ten years in the making and worth every minute of waiting!” —Elle
“As ever, it is Adichie’s outsider viewpoint that draws you in, whether she is making (often barbed) observations about queueing for loo roll in lockdown, relationship dynamics or political and racial divides in the US. Adichie can cram those details, with the deftest touch, into the same paragraph. And these women’s overarching stories—laced with longing and delayed dreams—provides real heart alongside the humour. What a pleasure to have both.” —Esquire
“[A] beautiful novel.” —Zadie Smith
“As in her previous works of fiction—most recently Americanah (2013)—Adiche makes her prose hum and throb with elegantly wrought and empathetic observations. . . . 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)
“Adichie portrays four women united by culture, geopolitics, immigration, sexism, trauma, and longing. . . . [She] electrifies her depictions of each character with stinging details and lacerating social critiques to striking, hilarious, and heartbreaking effect. . . . 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)
“Dream Count reminds you of what made Adichie such a phenomenon in the first place: those precise sentences; that biting satire; all those vivid, complicated women.” —Constance Grady, Vox
“It’s difficult now to write a serious realist novel like Adichie’s earlier works. But that—the full imagining of other lives from both inside and out—is where I think her heart and deepest talents lie.” —Literary Review
“An unstoppable force of a book . . . Adichie’s beautifully pared back writing with its exquisite knife-like prose reaches the heart of the matter. Dream Count is as powerful as any of her other work, a must-read.” —Cathy Kelly, author of Someone Like You and Sisterhood
“Adichie is a master storyteller who simply dazzles and hypnotises with her satire, wit, and prose. And for that reason alone, this novel that was 10 years in the making is well worth the wait.” —The Hindu
“Dazzling. . . . It is rigorously, bracingly contemporary—and yet it has a timelessness that characterises all great fiction.” —Orwell Prize for Political Fiction panel
“Innovative. . . . Adichie’s attention to hierarchies of language, the misuses of jargon, is one of her superpowers. . . . Dream Count, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s first novel in a dozen years, is dreamy indeed. An accumulation of scenes and sensations, cloudlike in their contour, floating this way and that against the backdrop of the pandemic that messed up sleep—and time itself—for us all.” —Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times
“Expansive. . . . The lives depicted in Dream Count are linked without being integrated, like tapestries on the four walls of a room. . . . The four women are sympathetic allies, but they tend to be better at diagnosing each others’ problems than facing their own. That’s a very recognizable flaw, and Ms. Adichie treats it as humanely as the rest of this tender and wistful novel.” —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
“More than 10 years on from Americanah, this latest book is infused with something new and distinctive in Adichie’s prose: a crystal-clear purposefulness, moral and furious. . . . What elevates the story is, as ever, the emotional acuity of Adichie’s writing. . . . In her ‘Author’s Note’, Adichie admits to seeking ‘to “write” a wrong in the balance of stories’, offering ‘clear-eyed realism, but touched by tenderness.’ Realism, yes, but tenderness most of all.” —Shahidha Bari, Financial Times
“Dream Count . . . is elevated to something singular through the incisive commentary on race, gender and class that readers have come to love from Adichie. . . . Dream Count is a satisfying read that is both comforting in its familiarity and discomfiting in its fresh take on broken dreams and hearts.” —Winnipeg Free Press
“Dream Count feels like a homecoming. The Nigerian author’s first work of longform fiction in over a decade reminds us of the sharp wisdom and sturdy empathy that have made her one of the most celebrated voices in fiction. . . . Dream Count succeeds because every page is suffused with empathy, and because Adichie’s voice is as forthright and clarifying as ever. Reading about each woman, we begin to forget that we’re separate from these characters or that their lives belong to fiction.” —Helen Wieffering, Associated Press
“A rich, complicated book that spans continents and classes. . . . Deeply compelling. . . . Adichie’s descriptions of these relationships are infused with comedy and pathos and a touch of romantic suspense. . . . Dream Count compels us to acknowledge, once again, that no story is ever just a single story.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“Composed of the interlocking stories of four women, Chiamaka (‘Chia’), Zikora, Omelogor and Kadiatou, it is also quintessential Adichie: ambitious, astute and powered by an accumulation of feather-light sentences that build to devastating weight.” —Sara Collins, The Guardian
“At times, Dream Count reads like a feminist War and Peace. . . . Suffused with truth, wit, and compassion, this is a magnificent novel that understands the messiness of human motivation and is courageous enough to ask difficult questions. It made me feel frustrated about the world but very good about the state of fiction.” —The Times
“Arguably Adichie’s best title yet. Having read and loved her previous novels, I was eagerly anticipating the release of Dream Count. Happily, it didn’t disappoint.” —The Independent
“Entertaining and compassionate, with gorgeous touches of life.” —The Irish Times
“A beautifully written triumph.” —London Evening Standard
“This is a complex, multi-layered beauty of a book. It is deeply and richly feminist. . . . It explores big themes—misogyny, masculinity, race, colonialism, cultural relativism, the abuse of power, both personal and institutional—but it does so subtly, almost imperceptibly. The book’s lessons on life and the world we inhabit are not thrust didactically at the reader but considered through the profoundly human experiences of her characters. . . . Dream Count is an extraordinary novel.” —The New Statesman
“Luxuriously layered. It’s the return of a literary titan.” —The Telegraph
“Love, death, motherhood—it’s all here, and few can handle it as capably as Adichie.” —GQ
“With one of the most anticipated books of the year, the iconic and legendary Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a writer of astonishing power. Her latest novel—already longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025—is a captivating exploration of love, identity, and the complexity of human relationships.” —Glamour UK
“The novel is an unflinching observation on the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power.” —Harper’s Bazaar
“Ten years in the making and worth every minute of waiting!” —Elle
“As ever, it is Adichie’s outsider viewpoint that draws you in, whether she is making (often barbed) observations about queueing for loo roll in lockdown, relationship dynamics or political and racial divides in the US. Adichie can cram those details, with the deftest touch, into the same paragraph. And these women’s overarching stories—laced with longing and delayed dreams—provides real heart alongside the humour. What a pleasure to have both.” —Esquire
“[A] beautiful novel.” —Zadie Smith
“As in her previous works of fiction—most recently Americanah (2013)—Adiche makes her prose hum and throb with elegantly wrought and empathetic observations. . . . 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)
“Adichie portrays four women united by culture, geopolitics, immigration, sexism, trauma, and longing. . . . [She] electrifies her depictions of each character with stinging details and lacerating social critiques to striking, hilarious, and heartbreaking effect. . . . 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)
“Dream Count reminds you of what made Adichie such a phenomenon in the first place: those precise sentences; that biting satire; all those vivid, complicated women.” —Constance Grady, Vox
“It’s difficult now to write a serious realist novel like Adichie’s earlier works. But that—the full imagining of other lives from both inside and out—is where I think her heart and deepest talents lie.” —Literary Review
“An unstoppable force of a book . . . Adichie’s beautifully pared back writing with its exquisite knife-like prose reaches the heart of the matter. Dream Count is as powerful as any of her other work, a must-read.” —Cathy Kelly, author of Someone Like You and Sisterhood
“Adichie is a master storyteller who simply dazzles and hypnotises with her satire, wit, and prose. And for that reason alone, this novel that was 10 years in the making is well worth the wait.” —The Hindu
“Dazzling. . . . It is rigorously, bracingly contemporary—and yet it has a timelessness that characterises all great fiction.” —Orwell Prize for Political Fiction panel
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