Modern Literary Nepali is a book published under the SOAS South Asian Texts Series by Michael Hutt. Hutt has previously made the world of Nepali literature accessible to English readers through his writings and translations. Three of his previous books are particularly pertinent here: Nepali, A National Language and its Literature (1988), Himalayan Voices: An Introduction to Modern Nepali Literature (1991) and Devkota's Muna Madan: Translation and Analysis (1996). He has also written many article-length analyses of different aspects of modern Nepali literature and translations of specific literary pieces for various journals.

In the preface, Hutt states that this book "seeks to introduce a selection of published 20th-century Nepali texts to a readership consisting both of students who have a basic grasp of Nepali grammar and vocabulary...and of teachers and students of other NIA [New Indo-Aryan] languages who wish to gain an impression of Nepali and its literature without first studying its grammar in depth." In other words, unlike the three books mentioned above, this book is not meant for the general reader. Instead, it is to be primarily used as a learning and teaching resource for those who intend to acquire a level of competence in Nepali that will eventually allow them to read and use literary and other sources in that language. Hutt, who has taught Nepali at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) for many years, must have been prompted to put together this book because no similar effort has been made in the past.

The book contains four parts. The first is a brief general introduction to modern Nepali history and literature. It also contains short contextual introductions to the eight pieces of prose given in part two of the book. Hutt also provides short notes on the nine poets-Lekhanath Paudyal, Balkrishna Sama, Laxmiprasad Devkota, Siddhicaran Shrestha, Kedar Man Vyathit, Gopal Prasad Rimal, Mohan Koirala, Bhupi Serchan, Banira Giri-whose verses are given in the third part of the book. He concludes the introduction with a note on the orthography, grammar and lexicon of modern literary Nepali. In part two, five short stories, two essays and an extract from an autobiography are given in their Nepali original with copious footnotes in English. In part three 21 poems (twenty complete poems and extracts from Laxmiprasad Devkota's classic Muna Madan) are given in their Nepali original with literal English translations supported by plenty of notes. Part four contains a glossary of Nepali words that appear in the texts along with their English translations.

As Hutt says in the preface, the choice of works included in this book was done to "provide a taste of modern Nepali literature" and the book does not claim to represent its "entire scope." Hence there is no point in arguing what he should have left out or included in this book. A dedicated reader of this book will definitely become familiar with some of the major Nepali writers of the 20th century and with some of their most famous works. As a native speaker of Nepali who has read most of the materials included here in their original, it is hard for me to assess just how useful the many features (especially the footnotes and glossary) included in this book are to a non-native student trying to enhance his or her ability in the language. Nevertheless, I think it serves its primary audience well.
point. Hutt says he began the project on which this book is based in 1988. Since then it has become much easier to provide students in London (or wherever Nepali is being taught to non-native speakers) packages of multi-media Nepali language source materials for learning and teaching. For instance, the corpus of Nepali language audio-visual reportage and documentaries with English sub-titles has increased quite a bit in the last decade. So have the number of Nepali language feature films available in video. In the last four years, independent radio programmers have produced excellent feature reportage that could, without much effort, be introduced in intermediate and advanced level Nepali language classes. With the help of the Internet, an increasingly large audio-visual Nepali language archive can be accessed with very little effort. In other words, it is no longer difficult to find useful teaching materials in the Nepali language. The real challenge is to find students who want to learn Nepali very seriously in adequate numbers. Since the economy of being fluent in Nepali is not all that favorable to non-native speakers, I am afraid that Hutt's book and the materials indicated above will not be used by a large body of non-Nepali students.