A Most Anticipated Book of 2025 from The Washington Post, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire, Elle, Oprah Daily, Readers Digest, The Seattle Times, LitHub, The Chicago Review of Books, BET, and Radio Times
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.
BIO
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.
REVIEWS
A Most Anticipated Book of 2025 at Oprah Daily, Readers Digest, The Seattle Times, LitHub, The Chicago Review of Books, Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Radio Times
“A rich, complicated book that spans continents and classes. . . . Moving through a comedy of manners and a hall of horrors, [their] stories overlap and intersect in ways that suggest the vast matrix of the African diaspora. . . . The extraordinary sympathy of Adichie’s storytelling makes Dream Count deeply compelling . . . . Adichie’s descriptions of these relationships are infused with comedy and pathos and a touch of romantic suspense, though the endings are foretold. What remains is the sweet sorrow of what might have been, rendered in language that feels entirely natural and yet instinctively poetic. . . . Adichie makes no effort to snap these four stories together neatly. Instead, the women interact and allude to one another naturally, allowing us periodically to register how they regard each other with sympathy or irritation, friendship or condescension. . . . The lives of Chia, Zikora, Omelogor and Kadiatou unfold here in different tones, but all benefit equally from Adichie’s ability to plumb their particular desires, their hopes and anxieties. You can hear that in the way she hones her style to reflect each woman’s education and experience. . . . 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
“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.” -- Nicola Sturgeon, The New Statesman
“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.” -- Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Times (UK)
[H] Knopf Publishing Group / March 04, 2025
1.33" H x 9.43" L x 6.6" W (1.5 lbs) 416 pages