It is 4:15 a.m. on Sunday, March 30, 2025.
I am done with Chimamanda Adichie’s latest novel, Dream Count1. A book that is riveting in its storytelling, but which, for me, loses its allure as you progress into the plot. I am caught marveling at how she has, once more, created this negative stereotype of almost every male character in yet another major work of fiction.
I do not remember when exactly I noticed this stereotype nor when I became aware of it.
Years ago, when I read Purple Hibiscus2 as a teenager, it would never have occurred to me to interpret the characters through the lens of an intentional stereotyping of a particular gender. Now, so many years later, what once could be dismissed as mere coincidental character flaws can now be judged with a measure of discernible authorial intention.
Let us begin with Eugene Achike himself, the archetypal patriarch – cruel, despotic, abusive. This conscious villainization and representation of masculine flaw permeates all Adichie’s subsequent works and follow a consistent pattern: of men who leave, men who are unfaithful, abusive, wanting in some material respect, crude and entitled, most times dirty and uncouth.
A list: Odenigbo, Kwame, Bartholomew, Darnell, Father Damian, Obinze, Ugwu, Chief Okonji, Aunty Uju’s General, the ‘Englishman’, the tennis Coach who sexually assaults Ifemelu, Zikora’s father, Olanna’s father, Zikora’s ‘thieves of time’ and virtually every other Chimamanda male character that I can think of.
Of course, being a feminist writer herself, one cannot but see the clear intent to expose patriarchal shortcomings and the unique struggles of women in relation to men. And yet, within Adichie’s works, rich with a plethora of themes and sub-themes, is laced the conscious and contrasting representation of gender, of the binaries of victim and villain, especially as both interact with each other within their romantic relationships.
There is an assigning, always, of fault and blame. This is, of course, not usually overt but masterfully curated in such a way that the readers are seemingly allowed to reach their own conclusions through the depiction of these characters, their interaction with each other and the narrative style adopted by the author. A narrative style where the readers can “see” the thoughts and motivations of the female characters and narrators, but only the actions of the men in their lives. What results isa masterful steering of a judgmental outcome devoid of any opportunity for empathy or balance and the creation of the archetypal asshole. Perhaps, nowhere has this been more evident and heightened than in her latest novel, Dream Count.
Speaking of contrasting representations, one which I have found constantly amusing is the consistent representation of these men as predominantly dirty and uncouth, descriptions one cannot find for women, even those of lowly station. The General in Americanah3, for all his wealth, lacked table manners. Onyeka, Anulika’s suitor, smelt like ‘rotten oil beans’ in Half of a Yellow Sun4. Ugwu, in his crude ways, stuck chicken wings in his Pockets5, and Zikora’s first “thief of time” in Dream Count had dirty bowls and cups by his bed.
Quite unexpectedly, in a moment of realization, it dawned on me while reading Dream Count, that Aunty Ifeoma in Purple Hibiscus was a widow. This is quite a subtle detail when you consider the entire plot. The peace, freedom and unrestrained joy which Aunty Ifeoma’s house symbolized for Kambili and Jaja was intentionally rid of active paternal influence. And while Ifediora, Aunty Ifeoma’s husband, is described quite positively in the few times his name is mentioned, it did not, in retrospect, come as a surprise to me that the only male figure in the book who could have contrasted Eugene’s negative qualities had his effect minimized through death. The only other male character who bore a semblance of some humanity and who Kambili utterly fell in love with was a Catholic Priest, Father Amadi. Almost as if to say, to attract the admiration of the main protagonist and by extension, the readers, male ugliness must be tempered by the Divine.
My mind was making these weird connections as I read the dialogue between Chia, Omelogor and Zikora, in Dream Count where Zikora asks Omelogor, ‘Is Pornography also why men steal and kill and lie?’6 She was responding in anger to Omelogor’s suggestion that pornography was part of the reasons men rape women, or at least, thought it more acceptable to do so.
This male propensity for violence and criminality was similarly echoed in Adichie’s collection of short stories The Thing Around Your Neck7. In the very first story itself ‘Cell One’, the narrator’s brother, Nnamabia, had orchestrated a break-in so he could pawn off his mothers’ jewelry. And he had done it because ‘other sons of professors were doing it’ and because of the “looseness” of male upbringing. A looseness we know Adichie has hinted at repeatedly herself, not least in her essay We Should All be Feminists, where she says that many Nigerians ‘have been raised to expect so little of men that the idea of men as savage beings with no self-control is somehow acceptable.’8 And one can sense, as this filters through in her literary creations, a resentment, an inability to distinguish the voice of the literary persona, from the voice of the author herself.
My primary reservation with this binary polarization of gender into victim and villain, this apportionment of blame in Adichie’s literary works is that it almost denies men their humanity. It adorns men with this ideological coat of perpetrator of female suffering, and within this paradigm, it becomes strange, almost impossible, to even conceive of men as victims of female cruelty.
Nowhere was this more evident for me than in Adichie’s latest conversation with Trevor Noah and Christiana Mbakwe, around her latest novel. Trevor, describing how he interpreted the book as a man while reading it, noted how everyone sees love from their own point of view, and how people tell love stories where they are rarely the villain, love stories where they are always slighted and the world has done them wrong. And to this Adichie inquired, ‘Do you mean women and men?’ and Trevor responded, ‘Yeah’. Adichie then asked with genuine curiosity, ‘So men tell love stories about how they were…?’ While she didn’t finish the question, it was obvious she was really asking if men shared stories about how, they too, have been wronged by women.
And right there, at that moment, it dawned on me. Did she not know? And even if she was being facetious, how much did she know about men’s peculiar struggles with women? It was such a startling realization that confounded me in its simplicity. I had always just assumed that she was all knowing, being the skilled writer that she is, one who notices the slightest detail. I had assumed that the worlds she created were wrought out of choice, to showcase the peculiar struggles of women, but how much of this world is really all that she’s seen, and heard and lived?
In Dear Ijeawele9, she noted once being in a room full of young women and being struck by how much the conversation was about men, ‘what terrible things men had done to them, this man cheated, this man lied, this man promised marriage and disappeared, this husband did this and that.’ Were these really the only stories she’d ever heard? Could she really conceive of stories where men weren’t just the perpetrators of female suffering?
While the distinct gender framing in Adichie’s works no longer surprises me, I am still surprised by her astonishment at the apparent polarity this framing is beginning to create. In the same interview, Christiana Mbakwe, describing the male characters in Adichie’s latest novel used the adjective ‘horrible’ to describe them, to which Adichie had exaggeratedly remarked, ‘What?’ with a grin and a look that suggested puzzlement by such extreme characterization, when in effect, one may safely surmise this is her intention: to highlight the strength and virtues of her female characters by contrasting them directly with the failings of the men.
Let’s consider a few examples: the perseverance and courage of Zikora during labor, and the stable anchor of her mother’s presence, heightened by Kwame’s absence and abscondment. Or Darnell’s insouciant arrogance, heightening Chia’s overzealousness to please him. Kadiatou’s father who always leaves, sometimes for days and weeks, most times before she awakens and who ultimately leaves her forever (in death) highlighting Kadiatou’s strong spirit and will to survive. To this end, Dream Count becomes not just a book about immense female courage, strength of spirit and camaraderie, it is also markedly about the failings of the pivotal male characters in their lives, who are framed as villains and time wasters and thieves of time.
**Chinonso Nzeakor is a legal practitioner with interest in poetry and the arts. Catch him on X @chinonsokenned1
[1] Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dream Count (America: Knopf, 2025)
[2] Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus (America: Algonquin books, 2003)
[3] Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah (America: Knopf, 2013), p. 83.
[4] Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun (America: Knopf, 2006), p. 87.
[5] Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun, p. 17.
[6] Adichie, Dream Count, p. 221.
[7] Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck (America: Knopf, 2009)
[8] Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists (United Kingdom: Fourth Estate, 2014), p. 12.
[9] Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dear Ijeawele (America: Kpnof, 2017), p. 19.
