Noli Me Tangere by Jose Rizal FEW novels have made a more shattering impact on the society in which they were conceived and read than Rizal s Noli Me Tángere and El Filibusterismo. And surely no writer paid a higher penalty for self-expression. Rizal was condemned to death and executed publicly by a firing squad of Filipino colonial troops on the 30th December 1896. The Spanish regime in the Philippines lasted less than two years more. Filipinos, inspired by Rizal, made the first nationalist revolution in Asia in 1896, established its first democratic republic, which survived until 1901, and in 1946, exactly half a century after Rizal s execution, became the first Asians to win independence from western colonialism. It is not mere patriotic pride that leads Filipinos to acclaim the author of the Noli and the Fili as the first Asian nationalist and as one who in his way moved the world. - from Amzon