Save 25% on Two Modern Classics of Philippine Literature

Click here and save 25% when you order this specially priced set of the paperback editions of José Rizal’s classic novels, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.

In Noli Me Tangere (“touch me not”), José Rizal (1861–1896) exposes “matters . . . so delicate that they cannot be touched by anybody,” unfolding an epic history of the Philippines that has made it that country’s most influential political novel in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Rizal, national hero of the Philippines, completed Noli Me Tangere in Spanish in 1887 while he was studying in Europe. He was executed by firing squad in 1896. Since then, Noli Me Tangere has appeared in French, Chinese, German and Philippine languages.

“A huge advance over previous translations, handsomely laid out and with enough footnotes to be helpful without being pettifogging. . . . There are few prophets who are honoured in their own country, and José Rizal is among them. But the condition of this honour has for decades been his unavailability. Mrs. Lacson-Locsin has changed this by giving the great man back his sad and seditious laughter. And it is badly needed.” —London Review of Books

Like its predecessor, Noli Me Tangere, El Filibusterismo (The Subversive) was written in Castilian while Rizal was traveling and studying in Europe. It was published in Ghent in 1891 and later translated into English, German, French, Japanese, Tagalog, Ilonggo, and other languages. A nationalist novel by an author who has been called “the first Filipino,” its nature as a social document of the late-nineteenth-century Philippines is often emphasized. For many years copies of the Fili were smuggled into the Philippines after it was condemned as subversive by the Spanish authorities.