Noli me tangere (novel)

Noli Me Tángere

The original front cover of the book.
Author	José Rizal
Country	Philippines (first printing in Berlin)
Language	Spanish
Genre	Novel, Fiction, Satire, Philippine History
Publication date	1887
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Followed by	El filibusterismo

Noli Me Tángere (Latin for Touch Me Not) is a novel written by José Rizal, one of the national heroes of the Philippines, during the colonization of the country by Spain to expose the inequities of the Spanish Catholic priests and the ruling government.

Originally written in Spanish, the book is more commonly published and read in the Philippines in either Tagalog or English. Together with its sequel, El Filibusterismo, the reading of Noli is obligatory for high school students throughout the country.

The title is Latin for "Touch me not", and is taken from John 20:17 in the Bible, where a newly-risen Jesus admonishes a bewildered Mary Magdalene: “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father.”

Early English translations of the novel used titles like An Eagle Flight (1900) and The Social Cancer (1912), disregarding the symbolism of the title, but the more recent translations were published using the original Latin title. It has also been noted by the Austro-Hungarian writer Ferdinand Blumentritt that "Noli Me Tángere" was a name used by ophthalmologists for cancer of the eyelids; that as an ophthalmologist himself Rizal was influenced by this fact is suggested in the novel's dedication, "To My household".