Even the most celebrated voices can fall silent. For Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, acclaimed author of Purple Hibiscus, Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun, that silence stretched into years a period marked by depression, self-doubt, and the painful sense that her stories were locked away.
Her new novel, Dream Count, the first in over a decade, marks a triumphant return to fiction and a deeply personal rebirth. But the journey back was anything but easy.
“I was fighting depression,” Adichie admits. “Not being able to write fiction when fiction is what you deeply love is just a terrible place to be.”
The 47-year-old Nigerian writer faced crippling writer’s block, triggered by personal hardships including her father’s kidnapping in 2015, the loss of both parents, and the demands of motherhood. Fiction — her most powerful creative outlet became almost impossible. She threw herself into public speaking engagements, hoping inspiration might come, but each time returned home “miserable.”
Poetry became her lifeline. Immersing herself in verse kept her tethered to language and the rhythms of writing, offering just enough light in a dark season.
Now, with Dream Count, Adichie presents a sweeping, intimate story of four African women — Chiamaka, Zikora, Kadiatou, and Omelogor — navigating isolation and loss during the Covid-19 pandemic. The novel is steeped in personal grief, written in the shadow of her father’s death in 2020 and her mother’s passing less than a year later.
Unlike the tightly restrained style of her earlier works, this novel embraces expansiveness. “I think my sentences are longer. I’m more willing to be a little indulgent. Life is so short — throw everything in, maximalism! You don’t know if you have tomorrow, so do it all now,” she reflects. Her rekindled love of poetry has infused the prose with a new lyrical quality.
“When the words finally returned, they emerged in a new voice,” Adichie says. That voice, once feared lost, has come back with strength and vitality. Now, with the book in readers’ hands, she feels gratitude — for completing it, for the audience who receives it, and for the rediscovery of her creative self. “My real self is the self that writes fiction. I’m grateful that it’s back.”
Her story is both a warning and a beacon for other creatives: silence and drought can be brutal, but renewal is possible. Her advice is clear: “Our primary responsibility is to create. Even if it’s difficult, stay on it. We cannot afford despair.”
For Adichie, the release of Dream Count is far more than another book launch. It is a reclamation of self, and a reminder that even in seasons of darkness, the seeds of new work can take root, waiting for their moment to bloom.
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