The Place of Politics in Fiction
Should novelists write the world as it is or as it should be?
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Novelists are an opinionated lot. They often say things, write essays, and sign petitions reflecting political positions that many of their biggest fans might not like. One of the best things about fiction is that it can convey higher (or at least more complicated) truths than even the author knows. A reader doesn’t have to sign on to V. S. Naipaul’s sometimes odious beliefs about postcolonial societies to take pleasure in his language and characters, or support a boycott of Israel, as Rachel Kushner publicly has, to find in her novel Creation Lake a nuanced but withering portrayal of both extractive capitalists and callow activists. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie self-consciously embodies this split between the novelist and polemicist. Her new novel, Dream Count, is her first in a dozen years—a period during which she wrote and spoke frequently about feminism, grief, and political dogmas. In a conversation this week with the Atlantic staff writer Gal Beckerman, Adichie explained how her novel departs from her beliefs, and why that’s a good thing. She also made clear that compartmentalizing her ideas of “what the world should be” is not as easy as it might seem.
First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic’s Books Section:
- Chimamanda Adichie’s fiction has shed its optimism
- Why the Trump administration canceled me
- The unlikely friendship behind an Oscar favorite
- “Amphigory”: A poem by David Eileen
Both Beckerman and Tyler Austin Harper, who also wrote about Dream Count this week, cite an offhand, possibly facetious statement that Adichie made in 2016: “We women should spend about 20 percent of our time on men, because it’s fun, but otherwise we should be talking about other stuff.” Why, in defiance of this feminist assertion, are men so prominent in her new book, they wonder? Because “I don’t want to write about women’s lives as I wish they were,” she told Beckerman. Instead, the novel tries to imagine actual women interacting with actual men. In fact, Adichie has strong opinions on the question of politics in fiction; as she told Beckerman, she believes that many writers are prone to “ideological conformity,” which can hobble their work. Perhaps she’d support this modest proposal: Fiction should spend about 20 percent of its time imagining the world as the author would like it to be.
But that’s easier said than done. We don’t live in a time when politics can be cordoned off from art; it permeates the world, and a novel without much of it would be difficult to believe. In an author’s note at the end of the book, Adichie confirms that the story of her character Kadiatou bears a close resemblance to the 2011 case of Nafissatou Diallo, the Guinean immigrant who alleged that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, assaulted her in a New York City hotel suite. (All criminal charges against Strauss-Kahn were dismissed; he settled Diallo’s civil suit against him for an undisclosed sum.) Adichie told Beckerman that she had struggled “to write honestly” about Kadiatou, because “I had unconscious ‘noble ideas’ for her.” And in the note, she admits to “creating a fictional character as a gesture of returned dignity. Clear-eyed realism, but touched by tenderness.”
So this character’s journey is undeniably political, elevating the perspective of a person whose allegations against a very powerful man were shut down in the courts. But, Adichie adds, the goal is to be “relentlessly human,” not “ideological”: Kadiatou has lost her husband, struggles with American sexual mores, longs for home. To render her carefully, Adichie tells Beckerman, she did prodigious research and watched hours of videos of Guinean women cooking. Her portrait reflects the world as Adichie wishes it were, but also shows a deep recognition of the world as it is. For a novelist, that is more than enough.
Chimamanda Adichie Is a Hopeless Romantic
By Gal Beckerman
Discussing Dream Count, her first novel in 12 years, the Nigerian author shares her thoughts on masculinity, political chaos, and the future of fiction.
What to Read
Twilight Sleep, by Edith Wharton
“Mrs. Wharton,” reads a line in The Atlantic’s review of her 1927 novel, Twilight Sleep, “has never really descended from that plane of excellence which since its beginning has characterized her work.” Implicit in this observation: until now. Although contemporary reviewers might not have appreciated Twilight Sleep as much as they did Wharton’s previous books, her 17th novel offers an updated, Jazz Age–variation on a familiar, Wharton-esque theme: social ruin. In Roaring ’20s New York, Pauline Manford, the book’s heroine, inoculates herself from life’s unpleasantries—including her second husband’s affair with his stepson’s wife, Lita—with a busy social calendar, but when disaster strikes and the affair is discovered, not even Pauline’s unblinking devotion to rationality, truth, and progress can soothe her emotional reaction. Named after the drug cocktail given to women in the 20th century to ward off the pains of childbirth, which brings to mind the anesthetized attitude of some of its characters, Twilight Sleep was republished in late 2024. — Rhian Sasseen
From our list: Six older books that deserve to be popular today
Out Next Week
???? The Antidote, by Karen Russell
???? Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful, by David Enrich
???? Goddess Complex, by Sanjena Sathian
Your Weekend Read
Cling to Your Disgust
By Spencer Kornhaber
It was inauguration weekend, and I’d been sitting in a restaurant where the bartender was blasting a playlist of songs by the rapper once known as Kanye West. The music sounded, frankly, awesome. Most of the songs were from when I considered myself a fan of his, long before he rebranded as the world’s most famous Hitler admirer. I hadn’t heard this much Ye music played in public in years; privately, I’d mostly avoided it. But as I nodded along, I thought it might be time to redownload Yeezus.
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