By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Knopf; 416 pages; $32. Fourth Estate; £20. C an you be a good polemicist and a good novelist? To judge by the accolades offered to Chima

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says the writer's block she experienced after becoming pregnant with her first child was "terrifying". "It's a really frightening place to be, because writing is the thing that gives me meaning," the acclaimed Nigerian author, 47, tells the BBC's Emma Barnett.

In turns, the book shifts its focus to three other women and their dreams. There is Chia’s friend Zikora, an ambitious lawyer who is desperate to be a mother, and Chia’s brazen cousin Omelogor, a banker in Nigeria who has a crisis of confidence upon coming to America.

The world has waited a decade for Adichie’s next novel: now, the author, activist and cultural phenomenon is back with a book full of dreams as big as her own

When her father died, the author of “Americanah” produced a slim work of nonfiction. When her mother died, she poured her grief into a sprawling 416-page novel.

"Dream Count", Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's first novel in over a decade, is "dreamy indeed", said Alexandra Jacobs in The New York Times. An "accumulation of scenes and sensations, cloud-like in their contour",

On the publication of her new book Dream Count, the hit author shares her views on bringing back joy to fashion and why writing has been a catharsis

Plus Colwill Brown’s “We Pretty Pieces of Flesh.”

Celebrated Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks with NPR's Michel Martin about her new book, "Dream Count."