Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of the most prominent voices in literature today. She gained international recognition with her debut novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), followed by Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), which explores the Nigerian Civil War, and Americanah (2013), a critically acclaimed novel about race, immigration, and love. Her TED Talk “We Should All Be Feminists” became a global feminist manifesto and was later adapted into a book of the same name (2012). Her searing and exquisite new novel, Dream Count, is a literary event ten years in the making.

In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on four women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. 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.

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 in the literary landscape.

About the Author
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.

Photo Credit: Manny Jefferson

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Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Hammer Theatre Center, 101 Paseo de San Antonio, San Jose, United States