Wishes, desires, aspirations, and hopes: A review of Adichie’s Dream Count

The covid-19 lockdown provides the backdrop for which Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie artistically unveils its psychological effect on her ensemble of four eponymous heroines – Chiamaka, Zikora, Kadiatou, and Omelogor, in her new novel, Dream Count (2025). By adopting an inductive method of narrative analysis in this review, their stories reveal the struggles for identity and self-worth of unmarried middle-aged African women in diaspora and at home in a society that expects nothing other than their compliance to its norms and values for women – matrimony and procreation. The merging of these women’s narratives into one creates a varied viewpoint on these struggles alongside other subject matters that Adichie sets out to highlight in African women’s lives. These women’s achievements and economic empowerment seem not to suffice for their inability to get married and or have children.