BY CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE

WITH WOODBLOCKS BY MICHAEL McCURDY

Open for reservations: Copies will begin shipping in January 2022.

No Reply Press is excited to announce Above All Else Do Not Lie by novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Delivered originally as a commencement address at Harvard University, her words are here rendered into an essay and published in print for the first time.

An elegy for what we have lost, and a philippic for what must be preserved, Adichie’s address is both soaring and specific. Her counsel is poignant and memorable. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, ”In every work of genius we recognize majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility when the whole cry of voices is on the other side.”

In our estimation, Above All Else Do Not Lie is such a work. Adichie’s words inspire us to do what we know to be right. They serve both as a simple reminder of what is true and as a radical reframing of the world. On truth, she urges vigilant fidelity:

I have always felt my best, and done my best, when I veer toward truth, when I don’t lie. And the biggest regrets of my life are those times when I did not have the courage to embrace truth. Now, telling the truth does not mean that everything will work out. Actually, it sometimes doesn’t. I’m not asking you to tell the truth because it will always work out, but because you will sleep well at night. And there is nothing more beautiful than to wake up every day holding in your hand the full measure of your integrity.

Be courageous enough to recognize those things which get in the way of telling the truth — the empty cleverness, the morally bankrupt irony, the desire to please, the deliberate obfuscation, the tendency to confuse cynicism for sophistication.

In these disorienting times, where the difference between up and down is blurred, let alone between right and wrong, she offers an inspired remedy.

Whether you are a leader, or whether you are the led, I urge you always to bend toward truth, to err on the side of truth. And to help you do this — Make literature your religion. Which is to say, read widely. Read fiction, and poetry, and narrative nonfiction. Make the human story the center of your understanding of the world. Think of people as people, not as abstractions who have to conform to bloodless logic, but as people — fragile, imperfect, with prides that can be wounded, and hearts that can be touched. Literature is my religion. I have learned from literature that we humans are flawed — all of us are flawed. But even while flawed we are capable of enduring goodness. We do not need first to be perfect, before we can do what is right and is just.

We are inspired by Adichie’s faith in the power of literature to play a leading role in our perennial rediscovery of human goodness. Her words proved such an inspiration to us, in fact, that No Reply Press was founded in large part as a venture to bring them to print. They have been our north star as we have navigated the question of what to publish and why. Make literature your religion. We have adopted her words as our mission, and have striven to contribute to the written canon of human struggles and triumphs.

This text is accompanied by six large illustrations by legendary woodblock artist Michael McCurdy. The address was given at Harvard University’s historic Yard — a cow pasture which over centuries came to be at the very heart of American politics and intellectualism. Adichie’s immediate predecessors included President Biden, Mark Zuckerberg, and J.K. Rowling. From the exact same spot, the Marshall Plan was announced. Context is everything, and Adichie’s address, though universal in its message, was not given in a vacuum. Therefore, her words are accompanied by McCurdy’s woodblock visions of the nature and structures between which her words echoed. The monumentalism, the history, the majesty (and perhaps even the inequity) provide key context. Furthermore, they are glorious in their scope and incredible in their detail. They are among the finest of McCurdy’s works, and have been painstakingly printed to preserve the warmth and depth of the originals.

ARTIST NOTES

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a novelist whose work has won international acclaim. The Times Literary Supplement has called her “the most prominent" of a new generation of African writers. In our estimation, hers is an essential voice of compassionate and thoughtful public discourse. We are honored to publish Above All Else Do Not Lie, her private press debut.

Michael McCurdy was a giant of woodblock illustration and the book arts. As the proprietor of the Penmaen Press and contributor to many others, Michael McCurdy helped shape the fine press movement (and woodblock’s centrality in it) over the twentieth century. He passed away in 2016, when a project which might use these long-shelved woodblocks was just a budding idea. This is likely his final fine press edition.

EDITION NOTES

• The edition is limited to 218 copies, numbered 1 through 218.

• The eighth imprint of No Reply Press, 2021.

• Printed by hand on Zerkall-bütten on a Vandercook Universal I.

• The binding is our small love letter to the simple elegance of fine materials. We have used Zerkall-bütten, a legendary mouldmade paper, and Zoë Goehring’s handmade Cave paper, which resembles the bark of the trees which interleave the woodblock illustrations. After selecting these finest of papers, we have tried to step back and let them speak for themselves, employing only a simple unfolded wrapper around uncut sheets.

• Housed in an optional handmade cloth solander box.