Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s first three novels won prizes and critical acclaim. Two were optioned for movies, and one, Americanah, sold more than a million copies in the U.S. alone. But then, the words stopped.
“I went through what people like to call writer’s block, which is an expression I do not like because I’m very superstitious,” Adichie told Morning Edition host Michel Martin.
Eventually, she wrote speeches and essays on feminism, human rights and grief, even a children’s book. But another novel eluded her until now.
“Writing fiction is the love of my life. It’s the thing that I think gives me meaning. And it’s quite different. I mean, the entire process is very different from writing nonfiction with fiction. It’s magical.”
Her new novel, Dream Count, her first since 2013, tells the interconnected stories of four women: three with ties to Nigeria, the fourth to Guinea. Their names are Chiamaka, Zikora, Omelogor and Kadiatou. But even before the characters came to her, she says, a phrase had lodged in her mind, waiting to be put to use. It became the first sentence of her book.
“I have always longed to be known, truly known by another human being,” Adichie writes, reciting the set of words that had been floating in her head for years. “I knew I would write something with that as kind of the kernel of the story,” she said.
Despite considering herself fortunate to be known by the people in her life, the passing of her father in 2020 made Adichie question how well she truly knew herself and others.
“When I heard the news of my father’s death, I threw myself down on the ground and I was pounding the floor. And I did not realize I was doing this. And afterwards I was shocked by it because I think if you’d asked me how I would react to losing my father, I think I would have said that I would just go numb and completely cold,” Adichie said.
Dream Count, largely set in the Washington D.C., area during the pandemic, explores the desires of its four protagonists — and how they come to understand the other through their experiences with friends, family and lovers.
Adichie explains it’s not so much that women are unknowable: “Women in general are more likely to have richer interior lives and are also socialized to just sort of embrace more complexity emotionally,” she said of her characters. “It may be that if men were raised differently in general, they might also have that kind of rich interiority, but I think women in general have more of it.”
* Culled from: npr.org
