Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Dream Count
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| 28 € / 14 € |
| Followed by a talk and book signing |
| English |
| Hall 1, Ground Floor |
Four women whose lives intersect: Chia is a travel writer searching for a sense of home. Zikora is a lawyer and single mother. Kadiatou works as a domestic helper for Chia and fights for justice after a sexual assault. Omelogor, Chia’s cousin, is a financial analyst in Lagos who dropped out of university in the U.S. and writes a blog about relationships and sexuality.
With Dream Count, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, one of the most important literary voices of our time, presents a new novel. In it, she tells a story of love and loss, friendship and self-determination – and the courage to take one’s life into one’s own hands. Dream Count is “a powerful tale of solidarity among four women between Nigeria and the United States” (FAZ).
On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the international literature festival berlin (11.–24.9.2025), the festival has secured Adichie for her only appearance in Berlin—one of just two in Germany. Three years after delivering the keynote speech at the opening of the Humboldt Forum in 2021, in which she called for courage and responsibility in addressing colonial history, Adichie returns to this venue. She will present her new book, read selected passages, and speak about the four women in her novel – and the fifth woman: the author herself.
An event organized by the international literature festival berlin (ilb) in cooperation with the Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss, the American Academy in Berlin, and S. Fischer Verlag.
The conversation with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and the Nigerian-American author and Financial Times columnist Enuma Okorowill take place in English. Following the event, there will be an opportunity to purchase Dream Count and have it signed.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in 1977 in Enugu, Nigeria, as the daughter of a professor of mathematics and a university administrator, and grew up in the university town of Nsukka. She first studied medicine and pharmacy in Nigeria for a year and a half and then moved to the USA, where she graduated from Drexel University in Philadelphia in 2001 with degrees in communications and political science, completed a course in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University, was a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, a Radcliffe fellow at Harvard University, and completed a master’s in African studies at Yale University in 2008.In 1998 she wrote the play »For Love of Biafra«. In 2002 she won the BBC World Short Story Awards for »That Harmattan Morning«. Shortly thereafter, Adichie débuted as a novelist with »Purple Hibiscus« (2003), which begins with a quote from Chinua Achebe’s »Things Fall Apart« and was praised by »DIE ZEIT« as a small masterpiece »that can bring the African continent and especially the nation of Nigeria into the consciousness of European readers«. The story, told from the perspective of an adolescent girl, is about the life of a well-to-do family, although the father appears to the outside world as critical of the system, but harasses his own family with religious obsessions and threatens them with violence. The novel was nominated for the Booker Prize in 2013. In her award-winning second novel »Half of a Yellow Sun« (2006), whose title alludes to the flag of the short-lived nation Biafra, she deals with the time before and during the civil war in Nigeria in the 1960s. The material was filmed by Biyi Bandele in 2014. Adichie’s third novel »Americanah« (2013; German 2014) tells of a love story in Nigeria in the 1990s. Adichie made her name as a feminist with the TED talk »We Should All Be Feminists« (2012), which pop singer Beyoncé Knowles used in her song »Flawless«. The central proposition is: »Feminist: A person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.« Her manifesto, together with four short stories, was translated into German under the title »Mehr Feminismus!« (2016). Adichie was honored with the PEN Pinter Prize and the Everett M. Rogers Award in 2018. A year later, she received the Kassel Citizen Award Das Glas der Vernunft. In 2020, she was awarded the International Hermann Hesse Prize for »Purple Hibiscus«. In 2025, Adichie will published her novel »Dream Count«, in which she explores groundbreaking existential female experiences through the continent-spanning stories of four women.Adichie’s novels have been translated into 55 languages and received numerous awards. She received honorary doctorates from various US universities, was named an honorary member by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2017, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The author lives in Nigeria, where she teaches creative writing, and in the USA.
Enuma Okoro, is a Nigerian-American author, essayist, curator and lecturer. She is a columnist for The Financial Times where she writes the op-ed weekend column, “The Art of Life,” about art, culture and how we live. She is also the curator of the 2024 exhibition, “The Flesh of the Earth,” at Hauser & Wirth gallery in Chelsea, New York. Her broader research and writing interests reflect how the intersection of the arts and critical theory, women’s studies, philosophy and contemplative spirituality, and ecology can speak to the human condition and interrogate how we live. Underlying this interrogation is a deeper interest in knowledge systems, and the power of narrative and story. She writes, lectures, curates, and hosts public conversations with the grounding premise that stories, through their varying mediums, are how we challenge old or false narratives, free our imaginations and tell new and expanded truths that shift perceptions and instigate change. Okoro has published nonfiction books. Her fiction and poetry are published in anthologies, and her nonfiction essays and articles have been featured in The New York Times, The Financial Times, Aeon, Vogue, The Erotic Review, The Cut, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Bazaar, NYU Washington Review, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and more. Visit www.enumaokoro.com for more information.
