Attempting to harness the powers of literacy to improve his standing and opportunities in rapidly developing Nepal, Dil Bahadur Tamang, an ambitious uneducated man of the hill village of Charigaon, instead encounters a most unexpected book of power and magic. This article tells the story of his encounter and of my own attempts to understand it. What is it about a book of essays by Lenin that makes it magic? Village resources for interpreting the significance of written materials include secular, Nepali-language schooling with its contexts of development, bureaucracy and state power; Tibetan Buddhist textuality with its ritual and lamaic authority; and the seemingly effortless literacy of foreigners -as well as a variety of less obviously related domains such as street magic, love curses and possession. In the end, however, the major power that literacy carries into Dil Bahadur's life is its power to exclude him.