After 11 years since her last novel was published, Chimamanda Adichie has made a comeback with her new book, Dream Count.
The author sat for an interview with The Guardian to discuss her new book, overcoming writer’s block, and welcoming twin sons.
Dream Count features the interwoven stories of four women. It is set in the US and Nigeria and covers the immigrant experience, mother-daughter relationships, the pressure on women to marry and have children, and late motherhood.
In the interview with Charlotte Edwards, Chimamanda said: “I didn’t want to leave such a long gap between novels.
“When I got pregnant [with her daughter], something just happened. I had a number of years in which I was almost existentially frightened that I wouldn’t write again. It was unbearable.
“There are expressions like ‘writer’s block’ I don’t like to use because I’m superstitious. But I had many years in which I felt cast out from my creative self, cast out from the part of me that imagines and creates; I just could not reach it. I could write nonfiction, that was fine. But that’s not what my heart wanted.”
After her father’s passing in 2020, she said she struggled with the language to write Notes on Grief which was published in 2021). Then, when her mother died months later in 2021, she thought she didn’t possess the words to write about her mother.
It was then that she started writing Dream Count, “and only when I was almost done did I realise, my God, it’s about my mother. It wasn’t intentional. I’m happy that it’s not a sad book. She wouldn’t want a sad book dedicated to her.”
Chimamanda, who has a 9-year-old daughter, also welcomed twin sons who were 10 months old at the time of the interview.
She kept this part of her life private because, according to her, she is “very resistant” and “very rarely” talks about her private life.
Read the full interview here.