Noli Me Tangere

Rizal's incendiary portrait of the Spanish colonial Philippines follows Crisóstomo Ibarra, home from Europe with plans to build a school, as the friars who rule the islands destroy him. The book moves between the capital and the provinces: the merchant houses of Binondo, the walled clerical fortress of Intramuros, the promenades along the Pasig, the killing field of Bagumbayan where the author himself would later be shot, and Ibarra's home town of San Diego in the countryside to the south.

Kapitán Tiago

Binondo (Kapitán Tiago's house)

Chapter 1

At Kapitán Tiago's crowded dinner party in Binondo, the returning Ibarra is introduced to a society of friars, officials and social climbers whose vanity and menace Rizal lays out at once. The prosperous, obsequious Tiago, forever currying favour with the powerful, embodies the collaborating class the book dissects.

Chapter 1

explicit The novel opens at a dinner in the house of the wealthy Kapitán Tiago in Binondo, the real merchant district of Manila across the Pasig from the walled city.

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