Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s new novel “Dream Count”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a literary world star, celebrated from Beyoncé to the Ted Talks. But her new novel “Dream Count”, for more than eleven years in the works, meets a reality that has become harder.

For a while, the attempts at love of ambitious women were the most interesting in the world. And then this time was over again. It was around the turn of the millennium when “Sex and the City” became one of the first global series successes and films “The strange behavior of sexually mature culprit during the mating season” or “What am I going to get rid of it in 10 days”. With benevolence you could read something political in romantic comedies at the time: the idea that women in particular could free themselves to love story for love story from thousands of gender roles and bad dependencies. Others, for example the Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz, at the same time warned that the new freedom in love was only the liberalized markets, which also also had negative consequences for women.