How Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie fought through creative block and depression

Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie poses during a photo session in Vincennes, Paris' suburb on March 27, 2025. Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images

(CNN) — Even the most celebrated voices can fall silent. For Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the acclaimed author of “Purple Hibiscus ,” “ Americanah” and “ Half of a Yellow Sun,” that silence stretched into years — a period marked by depression, self-doubt and the unsettling feeling that the stories she was meant to tell were locked away.

Her new novel, “Dream Count,” the first in over a decade, marks a triumphant return to fiction and a deeply personal rebirth. But getting here meant navigating one of the most challenging chapters of her life.

“In the years that I couldn’t write, I was fighting depression,” Adichie tells CNN. “Not being ab