Chimamanda Adichie’s 'Dream Count' Makes Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist on Release Day

Dream Count, the newly released fourth novel by celebrated Nigerian American author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, has been longlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction. The book, which saw global release just today, is Adichie’s first novel since her star-making 2013 effort, Americanah, which won the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award.

Described as “a publishing event 10 years in the making,” Dream Count chronicles the experiences of four women as they deal with broader issues centering on identity, social expectations and immigration. Set between Nigeria and the U.S., a myriad of themes are woven into the novel, including romantic disappointments, career struggles, COVID-19 paranoia, women’s health and much more.

Dream Count was one of the most anticipated novels of this year, and it’s been described by The Guardian as “practically… four novels for the price of one.”

In an interview with BBC, Adichie shared that she suffered from writer’s block after the birth of her daughter in 2016, saying that it was a “terrifying” experience. She also shared that her mother’s death in 2021, less than a year after her father passed away, was integral to Dream Count. “I felt very strongly that, in some ways, my mother had opened the door for me to get back into this magical place that means that I can write fiction,” she said, noting that the novel has a lot about mothers and daughters, even though she didn’t realize that while writing.

The Women’s Prize longlist selection is now the fourth time Adichie has been recognized with this honor. Half of a Yellow Sun, the author’s masterpiece set during the Nigeria-Biafra civil war in the late 1960s, won the Women’s Prize (then known as the Orange Prize) back in 2007. The novel also won the Women’s Prize for Fiction Winner of Winners, a one-off award during the prize’s 25th anniversary celebrations.

All three of Adichie’s previous novels have been longlisted for the prize, including her classic coming-of-age debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best First Book in 2005.

This year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist comprises 16 books, with more than half the authors recognized for their debut novel. The list notably includes Moroccan American author Laila Lalami, up for her futuristic, dystopian novel The Dream Hotel.

Lalami is a decorated author; her magnum opus, The Moor’s Account, won the National Book Award and was a 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist. This is also the second time Lalami is in the running for the Women’s Prize for Fiction; her immaculately written coming-of-age novel, Secret Son, was on the Orange Prize longlist in 2010.

The winning author of the fiction prize will receive a £30,000 cheque and a limited-edition bronze statuette, known as “Bessie,” created by artist Grizel Niven.