The Social Cancer

Returning home to the Philippines after studying in Europe, the idealistic Crisóstomo Ibarra confronts the corruption, cruelty, and injustice of Spanish colonial rule and the friars who dominate his country, in a novel that helped ignite a national awakening. Rizal’s passionate, sweeping work exposes oppression while portraying a whole society with satire, tenderness, and tragedy. Enormously influential, this founding masterpiece of Filipino literature stirred a people toward reform and revolution—and led to its author’s execution. Powerful and moving, The Social Cancer (Noli Me Tángere) is both a great novel and a historic act of courage, a searing indictment of tyranny and a landmark of anti-colonial literature.