Under the scorching sun of Afghanistan, a young girl named Amina clutched her schoolbooks, her heart pounding. She wasn’t supposed to be here. The Taliban had banned girls from education, but she and her mother had found a secret school, hidden behind a dusty shop in Kabul. Every step she took felt like defiance, like a battle cry against a world that wanted her silent including her dream.
Halfway across the world, in Iran, a woman named Leila tore off her hijab as she stood among thousands of protesters chanting “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi“, “ Woman, Life, Freedom.” She had seen too many friends arrested, too many voices silenced, and yet, here she was, unafraid. The morality police had taken her sister last year for “improper dress,” and she never came back. But Leila had nothing left to lose, only freedom to gain.
In Yemen, 14years old Safiya didn’t know she was about to be married until her mother woke her up at dawn to dress her in a heavy red gown. “You’re a woman now,” they told her, but she still felt like a child. She dreamed of school, of running through the streets without fear, but in her war-torn country, girls were married off like property, their futures stolen before they even had a chance to dream.
Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, Noor sat behind the wheel of her car, gripping it tightly. Just a few years ago, driving as a woman was illegal. Change was happening, but Noor knew it was not enough. Women still needed permission from male guardians for so much, traveling, marriage, even medical care. She had been jailed once for speaking out, but if that’s what it took, she would do it again.
Deep in the Congo, Adama walked for miles every morning to fetch water, knowing the dangers that lurked along the way. Armed groups roamed freely, using women as weapons of war. She had seen it happen to others, and she prayed it wouldn’t happen to her. But Adama was determined, she would not just survive, she would fight for something better.
In Pakistan, Fatima stood at the entrance of her classroom, blocking the men who had come to shut it down. “Girls do not need education,” they said. But Fatima, inspired by Malala Yousafzai, knew better. She had seen what happened when girls were denied education, poverty, child marriage, oppression. She refused to let that be her fate.
Each of these women, though separated by borders, languages, and cultures, have one thing in common, they refused to accept oppression. They are warriors, not with swords, but with books, with voices, with courage.
As we mark the International Women’s Day the world over, we focus our literary microscope on a woman who has stood on a threshold of authenticity and audacity, daring the status quo and constantly pushing the frontiers of femininity and gender equality, inspiring women all over the world to not just stand for themselves but to push for more, exploring the greatest versions of themselves.
For twelve long years, the world had been waiting. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the literary powerhouse whose words had shaped conversations on feminism, race, and identity, had not given readers a novel since Americanah. Fans held on to her books like treasures, quoting her essays, sharing her speeches, and dissecting every interview. Then on March 4, 2025, Dream Count arrived, a book as bold, unflinching, and deeply human as the stories that had come before it.
Born in Enugu, Nigeria, in 1977, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in a home filled with both intellect and history. Her father was a professor of statistics; her mother, the first female registrar at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Their home had once belonged to Chinua Achebe, as if foreshadowing the literary legacy Adichie would one day carry forward.
She first imagined herself as a doctor, enrolling in medical school at the University of Nigeria. But storytelling was her true calling. At 19, she left for the U.S., trading scalpels for words, earning degrees in Communication, Political Science, Creative Writing, and African Studies. Then came the books that made the world sit up and listen.
Purple Hibiscus (2003), her debut, was a quiet storm, a coming-of-age story wrapped in the tensions of religion, family, and personal freedom. ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ released in 2006 was bolder, capturing the Nigerian Civil War with devastating intimacy, winning the Orange Prize for Fiction.
Americanah, a love story woven with migration, race, and longing, a novel that became both a bestseller and a cultural touchstone was released in 2013, and then, nothing. Although not complete silence. Adichie gave the world essays and speeches, reshaped feminist discourse with ‘We Should All Be Feminists’, and shared her most personal loss in ‘Notes on Grief’. But fiction? That was where she had first made people feel seen.
And for over a decade, that space remained empty. Then, in 2025, Dream Count arrived. And it was not just a novel. It was a statement. A reckoning. A reminder that Adichie had never really left—she had only been gathering more truths to tell. Speaking on why it took a whole decade and a few for her to release a new book, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in an interview with Waterstones said she had experienced a writer’s block and it lasted a while but her mum’s passing was the change maker.
A Story of Women, Power, and the Dreams That Matter. Dream Count is not just a novel, it’s a tapestry of four women’s lives, each thread woven with ambition, injustice, love, and survival. At its center is Chiamaka—Chia—a Nigerian travel writer stranded in Washington, D.C., when the COVID-19 pandemic brings the world to a halt. She is caught between two lives, two identities, two futures she cannot fully grasp.
And through her, we meet the other women. Zikora, a lawyer who has mastered ambition but not love. Omelogor, a banker who refuses to be small in a world that wants to shrink her. And Kadiatou, Chia’s housekeeper, who suffers a brutal injustice while working at a hotel—a story that echoes real-life cases of power and exploitation, like the Nafissatou Diallo case.
Their stories unfold in the spaces between privilege and struggle, in the quiet betrayals of friendship, in the weight of expectations placed on women. And always, there is the question, ‘Whose dreams get to count?’
From the moment Dream Count was released, it sparked conversation. Critics called it “ferocious and tender in equal measure.” Helen Wieffering of the Associated Press wrote, “Every page is suffused with empathy, and Adichie’s voice is as forthright and clarifying as ever.” Readers devoured its explorations of friendship, ambition, and the ways women lift, and sometimes wound each other.
But not everyone was satisfied. Some critics argued that the novel’s male characters were underdeveloped, that its conflicts simmered without fully boiling over. Others saw echoes of Adichie’s own public battles, her critiques of cancel culture, her unfiltered feminism, woven into the narrative. Yet, love it or debate it, no one can ignore it.
The book was longlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction, standing alongside the year’s most powerful works. In Nigeria, readers embraced it like the return of a beloved daughter. “She tells our stories,” they said, “she sees us.” The truth about women who carry both strength and flaws. About injustice that whispers and injustice that shouts. About love, the kind that saves us and the kind that nearly destroys us.
After twelve years, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie did not just return. She reminded us why we had been waiting. Dream Count is a reflection of the battles that women face but moreso projects Adichie’s connection to humanity. On speaking on the loss of her parents in an interview, Chimamanda says, “My grieving surprised me. I would never have imagined myself as a person who reacted by throwing myself down, my response was so physical, so dramatic.
Normally there’s a coldness to the way I deal with pain, I would have thought I would just freeze and go numb, but instead it was an exercise in melodrama. He was such a good man. His wisdom, his dry humor, such a good man. I think my father dying I have in some ways made peace with now, but my mother’s death I have not.”
As we commemorate the International Women’s Day, let us lend our voices to speaking up for the rights of women and support eachother to our fullest potential. Like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, be human, be authentic but even moreso, be daring and make your dreams count.
