Rizal publishes new book

JOSE Rizal’s “Noli Me Tangere” has been published in a new English translation and released worldwide by Penguin Books, one of the major publishing houses of the English-speaking world, under the Penguin Classics imprint. The publication effectively canonizes the novel as one of the classics of world literature.

It is the first time that a Southeast Asian title has been included in the Penguin Classics, which was started in 1946 with the publication of E.V. Rieu’s translation of Homer’s “Odyssey.”

In the book’s blurb, Penguin bills the “Noli” as “the book that sparked the Philippine revolution” and “the great novel of the Philippines.”

“[Rizal] is a prisoner of his own legend… Whoever he was in life has become irrelevant. He’s probably closer to Joan of Arc or St. George than he is to Jose Marti,” he said.

“[It] was the first major artistic manifestation of Asian resistance to European colonialism, and Rizal became a guiding conscience—and martyr—for the revolution that would subsequently rise up in the Spanish province,” Penguin said.

The new translation of the “Noli” was done by an American writer, Harold Augenbraum, a scholar of Hispanic-American letters and the executive director of the National Book Foundation and the National Book Awards.

“[Rizal] is a prisoner of his own legend… Whoever he was in life has become irrelevant. He’s probably closer to Joan of Arc or St. George than he is to Jose Marti,” he said.