Noli Me Tangere

Noli Me Tangere is a novel by the Filipino writer and national hero José Rizal, first published in 1887 and available in English translation ever since. It is one of the founding works of Philippine literature and the book for which Rizal was ultimately executed.

Crisostomo Ibarra returns to San Diego after years of study in Europe, expecting to marry Maria Clara and settle into the life his father intended for him. He learns instead how his father, a wealthy ilustrado, was treated before his death and afterwards, and the discovery sets him against the Spanish friars and officials who run the town.

Rather than leave, Ibarra keeps to his father's plan of building a school for the children of the district and takes up his place among people who are far more afraid of the priest Padre Damaso than of any civil authority. Rizal wrote the novel as an exposure of colonial rule and of the Church's part in it, and the phrase in its title, taken from the words spoken to Christ after the resurrection, suggests a wound that cannot be touched.