Dream Count: A Novel

“Adichie’s powerful and rich prose expos[es] the fault lines of cruelty and the multi-layered elements of cultures. Reading Dream Count is a richly rewarding and painful experience . . .”

Dream Count is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s fourth novel. Each of the previous three won prestigious literary prizes. She has five other published books and many reviews and essays in major periodicals and newspapers. Adichie is one of the major writers from Nigeria writing in English following in the line of Nigerians initiated by Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Adichie splits her time between Nigeria and the United States. Her writing offers insights into both Nigerian and American culture.

Dream Count relates the stories of four women whose lives are intertwined in varying degrees. Three are Igbo, and they share that Nigerian culture. The four women are: Chiamaka, a travel writer based in Maryland; Zikora, a lawyer in Washington and a Catholic; Omelogor, Chia’s cousin and a successful banker in Abuja; and Kadiatou, who wins the visa lottery and emigrates to the United States. Kadiatou is a Fula speaker from rural Guinea somewhere outside of the capital Conakry.  

Dream Count is divided into five sections beginning with Chiamaka in which the other three women are introduced. The following three sections in order are Zikora, Kadiatou, and Omelogor. The fifth section again belongs to Chia. Time sequencing is not linear, and pieces of each woman’s story are found across the five sections of the novel.  Each of them is connected closely, at some point in their lives, to Chia around whom this novel turns. Each of the four women offer their story in their voice and from their point of view. All four have troubled relationships with the men in their lives, and all four experience the push and pull of at least two cultures.

Adichie writes in an Author’s Note that Dream Count is really about her grief at the death of her mother that came shortly after the death of her father. One of the themes in this novel is the relationship between mothers and daughters that is most deeply revealed in the lives of Zikora and Kadiatou.

Chia is in search of the ideal of love that she holds. She is an astute observer of cultures and personalities and her descriptions of the people in her life can be incisive, critical, and, often, very funny. Along the way Chia has involvements of varied length and depth with men from Sweden, England, the Netherlands, and the United States. All fail to end in marriage, and the ideal remains elusive.

Zikora is a lawyer in Washington, D.C., and she works in a law firm of high repute. Much of her story centers on her relationship with her lover Kwame, a Ghanan. When faced with the fact of Zikora’s pregnancy Kwame abandons her, and the details of her labor with support from her mother are riveting and painful physically, and emotionally for the reader.

Omelogor, Chia’s cousin, lives in Abuja where she becomes a key person in running a bank that services the needs of politicians and businesspeople. The corruption of the banking system is massive, and Omelogor learns how to manipulate it to the advantage of her boss, the bank, and finally, herself. Her power is considerable, and what she does with that power is both socially constructive and fascinating.

Omelogor decides to leave banking, go to the United States, and study for an advanced degree in cultural studies. Her primary area of study is pornography. The move proves to be a mistake and leaves her embittered. After leaving the university, she opens her home to entertaining friends in a salon atmosphere, while also developing a website titled “For Men Only.”  

Kadiatou lives a life full of tragedy. Unlike the other three women she is not a Nigerian. She lives in a small village in Guinea that is steeped in traditional culture and Islam. She loves the simplicity of this life, is devoted to her father, and admires her older sister, Binta. Kadiatou’s story conveys a feeling for traditional culture with its warmth and its limitations, particularly those dealing with women. Tragedy strikes first when her father dies in a mining accident. Her sister Binta dies in surgery to correct excessive bleeding that is likely a side effect of female circumcision.

One of Binta’s friends Amadou falls in love with Kadiatou, but when he wins the visa lottery to go to the United States, he emigrates, promising to send for her when he has enough money for them to marry. This proves to be a very long time, and Kadiatou has no contact with him. Her uncle and guardian arranges a marriage to Saidou, and she goes to live in a mining town that is saturated in dust. Kadiatou’s first pregnancy ends in a miscarriage. When she has a son, he dies in just a few days. She is pregnant for a third time when her husband dies. She does not reveal her pregnancy to his family and leaves for Conakry to live with an aunt. Her baby is a girl and Kadiatou names her Binta.

Amadou finally returns to Guinea and takes Kadiatou and Binta to America where he is absent more than not. Kadi gets a job in a restaurant that shows promise until she is raped by the owner. Amadou’s uncle gets her a job as a maid in a Washington hotel where she meets Chia and the two of them quickly develop a friendship. This leads to Kadi doing Chia’s hair and becoming her part-time housekeeper. When the hotel closes for refurbishment, Chia and Zikora will get Kati a job at a major hotel. Things are going well at the hotel until she is sexually assaulted by a French diplomat when she enters his VIP suite to clean the rooms.

This is an extremely painful section of the novel as Kadi’s life is splashed across the newspapers of Europe and the United States. She is eaten alive in the media as she is unable to navigate this world with her weak language skills and lack of sophistication. America proves unsympathetic to this innocent woman, as does a legal system more interested in the plausible than in truth.

All of this and much more are delivered in Adichie’s powerful and rich prose exposing the fault lines of cruelty and the multi-layered elements of cultures. Reading Dream Count is a richly rewarding and painful experience that may tell us more than we want to know about ourselves and our world.