Photo Credit: Lisa Markwell/Instagram
It’s Dream Count week, and while the official release is set for tomorrow, March 4th, some readers have already got their hands on a copy. As we count down, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s latest interview offers even more insight into the novel and the themes at its core.
In a new conversation with The Telegraph, Adichie discusses Dream Count, the women at its centre, and much more.
At her first public reading in Piccadilly, she shared an excerpt with a room full of joyful, eager faces. The novel follows four women, a story she’s been waiting to tell. “For a long time I’ve wanted to write about the reality of women’s lives in a very straightforward way – because this is how I approach my fiction, I don’t like to hide,” she says. “I wanted to write about childbirth, female cutting, premenstrual dysphoric disorder – because I care about them.”
Beyond the novel, Chimamanda also shares her thoughts on Donald Trump, children, vanity, food, family, her books, and the entitled generation.
Read excerpts from the interview below
Photo Credit: Lisa Markwell/Instagram
Her reaction to discovering she was having twins
“Shock! I still sometimes look at them and think, who are these two tiny people in my house?”
On social media and its impact
“I really think that social media has robbed this generation of young people of the ability to see human beings as messy and complex. It has made everything so black and white; it has really flattened things – we cannot have conversations where we talk about complexity, or where we acknowledge that the other side might have a point – and it’s bad for the way the world works.”
“I think it’s poison, I really do.”
Can social be fixed?
“I’ve been thinking about that a lot – what if you put sensible women in charge of the tech companies? I think the goals would change. I do wonder if there’s a way that social media could be made gentler. What if we changed the algorithms? What if you had to use your real name to use X?”
On co-hosting the Met Gala: Fashion, art and a little craziness
“I’m more excited about that than my novel!” she laughs. “Whatever the dress, I still need to wear proper underwear! Because these days when they make dresses I feel that they just find the most ridiculous places to cut out things, and I just think, why?
“So that’s my demand – proper underwear and a bra, thank you very much… I like fashion and there’s an element of art and craziness too: fashion, art and craziness, I love them all.”
On grief and losing her parents
“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 humour – 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.”
On Donald Trump
“I think we use words like ‘unbelievable’ very easily,” she says, “but if there’s any point in human history where that word is truly apt, it is now. It really is. There is an aura of disbelief when I wake up every day and read the news. It’s not just that he’s come back, it’s the manner of return. There is a kind of utter recklessness that is both confusing and also frightening. You cannot love a country and treat it so recklessly – love demands a certain carefulness. All this talk of ‘America First’ – there is no love there, there really isn’t.”
“Anyone who has even a basic understanding of egomania knows that the Trump/Musk alliance will not last, but there’s this entertainment factor that Trump brings which I think is why he won the first time, and even the second time. But we need to remember that lives are at risk.”
“People who voted for him are going to suffer with all these lay-offs. I have a friend who works in early childhood education and it’s really sad listening to her – she says every day she gets to work and there’s a new memo, and she’s been told the next academic year won’t be renewed – this is for children whose parents can’t afford to buy them crayons.
“I thought Nigeria could do ridiculous things politically, but this is worse than Nigeria.”
Read the full interview here.
