Dream Count

Adichie (Americanah) 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. It begins with Chiamaka, a Maryland-based travel writer from Nigeria who recounts her history of failed romances while laid up during the Covid-19 lockdown. Adichie then turns to Chiamaka’s best friend Zikora, a pregnant Washington, D.C., lawyer who’s determined to celebrate achieving her long-held dream of motherhood even though her husband has just left her. The next section follows Chiamaka’s cousin Omelogor, who leaves her job at a corrupt bank in Abuja, Nigeria, for an MBA program in the U.S., hoping to discover the part of herself that is “noble and good.” She’s bewildered by all the “perfect righteous American liberals” in her program, including a classmate who accuses her of Islamophobia for sharing the story of her uncle’s murder by anti-Christian militants, and her disenchantment turns to rage. Most heartbreakingly, Chiamaka’s Guinean housekeeper, Kadiatou, is sexually assaulted by a prominent French economist and politician at her hotel cleaning job, and the case draws scrutiny on her after it receives international notoriety. Adichie riffs brilliantly on what feminism means to her characters and renders each woman’s story in a distinctive voice—Omelogor’s rants in particular provide a thrilling contrast to the cool autofiction of Chiamaka’s sections. This is well worth the wait. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency. (Mar.)