Chimamanda Adiche set to release first novel ‘Dream Count’ in 10 years

The highly anticipated ‘Dream Count’ is the first novel in a decade from the Nigerian-born and award-winning writer Chimamanda Adichie, set to be released next year.

The novel will be released next year on 4

March 2025 and published in the UK ⁰ by 4th Estate and in the US and Canada by Knopf.

On Wednesday, Chimamanda shared her excitement on her Instagram page, describing DREAM COUNT as “serious and curious and probing and funny”. Shemmm0p admitted, “The writing process has been arduous and has also been filled with ardour. I am deeply excited about this book. I am so proud to have finished it. I cannot wait for my wonderful fans to read it.”

Dream-Count

The storyline

In a departure from her recent work, a children’s book titled Mama’s Sleeping Scarf, ‘Dream Count’ delves into the profound emotions of love and heartbreak that women endure, inviting readers to empathise with the characters.

The novel tells the tale of four women who experience the harsh realities of life in different facets.

Chiamaka, a Nigerian travel writer living in the U.S. during the pandemic, dives into her messy past, replaying old romances and wondering what went wrong. Her best friend Zikora, a devout Catholic and successful lawyer, is blindsided by betrayal, forcing her to turn to someone she never imagined for help. Then there’s Chiamaka’s cousin Omelogor, a financial mogul in Nigeria, who, despite all her success, can’t shake off nagging doubts about her identity. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is fiercely raising her daughter in America—until an unimaginable crisis threatens to destroy everything she has worked hard for.

Accolades

Adiches’s first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Her second, Half Of A Yellow Sun (2006), won the Orange Prize for Fiction (subsequently the Bailey’s Prize, and now the Women’s Prize for Fiction) – the world’s most prestigious annual book award for fiction by a woman.

In 2015, Half Of A Yellow Sun received Bailey’s ‘Best of the Best award, selected from the ten prize winners during its second decade. Her third novel, Americanah (2013), won the US National Book Critics Circle Award – the most respected literary award in the US, being that professional book critics select winners – and was named one of the New York Times Top 10 Best Books of the Year.

In 2018, she was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize, named after Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter. The prize is given annually to a writer of “outstanding literary merit who shows a fierce intellectual determination.”

She shared the Pinter Prize with imprisoned Saudi lawyer and human rights activist Waleed Abulkhair.

She was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2015, and Fortune Magazine named her one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders in 2017.

In 2018, she received the Global Hope Coalition’s Thought Leadership Award and the Action Against Hunger Humanitarian Award.

In 2023, she published her latest work, a children’s book titled Mama’s Sleeping Scarf, under the pseudonym Nwa Grace-James.

She has received 16 honorary doctorate degrees from some of the world’s leading universities. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.