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Noli Me Tangere cover
SEE THROUGH IT

Noli Me Tangere

by José Rizal

The novel a colony banned and then followed.

For you if

you want to see how a colonial order runs on small cruelties.

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$16 MSRP · Paperback
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Crisostomo Ibarra comes home to the Spanish-ruled Philippines after years in Europe, full of plans for a school, and runs straight into the friars, the officials and the local bigwigs who run the colony on fear and favors. Rizal wrote it in 1887 as a novel that works like an X-ray of colonial rule: the church, the courts and the gossip all lean in the same direction. The authorities banned it, and it became one of the books that lit the road to the Philippine revolution.

Where This Book Lives

Themes
anti-colonialismcolonialism's legacypolitical corruptionpower of literaturereligion and politics
Topics
colonialism

Rizal was executed by the Spanish colonial government in 1896, and the book was banned there. Philippine law still requires students to read it. Pick a recent English translation, since older ones read stiff. isBanned stays false until a ban jurisdiction doc exists for the colonial Philippines. No Philippines geoTag confirmed, so isDispatches stays false. Fills a real gap: the catalog has Filipino voices in Nick Joaquin and Mia Alvar but nothing from the colonial era.

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