Spanish · Advanced
Read Noli me tángere in Spanishwith every sentence explained
English title: Touch Me Not
José Rizal · 1887
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About the book
Noli me tángere by José Rizal was first published in 1887. In Passage you read the full text in the original Spanish, marked advanced and filed under historical fiction and romance. It runs to about 133,600 words.
A young idealist comes home. A colonial society closes ranks against him.
After seven years of study in Europe, Crisóstomo Ibarra returns to the town of San Diego in the Spanish-ruled Philippines, full of plans for a modern school and eager to marry his childhood sweetheart, María Clara. But he soon learns that his father died in prison, disgraced by the powerful friar Padre Dámaso, and that in his homeland good intentions can be dangerous.
Between lavish dinners, village fiestas and whispered warnings from the mysterious boatman Elías, Ibarra must decide how far he can push against the Church and the colonial authorities without losing everything he loves.
Written in Spanish by José Rizal, Touch Me Not fired the imagination of the Philippine independence movement and made its author a marked man. Today it is the national novel of the Philippines, read by every schoolchild.
- Author
- José Rizal
- First published
- 1887
- Language
- Spanish
- Level
- Advanced
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Romance
- Length
- About 133,600 words
How it opens
A fines de Octubre, don Santiago de los Santos, conocido popularmente con el nombre de «Capitán Tiago», daba una cena, que, sin embargo de haberla anunciado aquella tarde tan sólo, contra su costumbre, era ya el tema de todas las conversaciones en Binondo, en otros arrabales y hasta en Intramuros. Capitán Tiago pasaba entonces por el hombre más rumboso, y sabíase que su casa, como su país, no cerraba las puertas á nadie, como no fuese al comercio ó á toda idea nueva ó atrevida.
Reading Noli me tángere in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Spanish. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked advanced, with richer vocabulary and longer sentences. If it feels heavy, start with an intermediate Spanish book and come back to it. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
