Noli Me Tángere (Berlin, 1887)
The title — Latin for “touch me not” — is taken from the Gospel of John. The novel follows Crisóstomo Ibarra, a young man returning from Europe to build a school in his hometown, only to be broken by the machinery of friar power, informers, and colonial justice. Around him move María Clara, the tormented Sisa, the enigmatic Elías, and Padre Dámaso: figures so recognisable to readers of the time that the book was condemned as subversive and heretical, and banned in the islands.
Rizal printed it in Berlin with money borrowed from his friend Maximo Viola. It is a work of satire as much as tragedy, and its purpose was diagnostic — to expose, as he put it, a social cancer so that it might be treated.
El Filibusterismo (Ghent, 1891)
The darker sequel. Ibarra returns disguised as the wealthy jeweller Simoun and works not to reform the colony but to corrupt it into revolution. Where the Noli argued for remedy, the Fili weighs the cost of violence — and refuses to bless it. The novel is dedicated to the memory of the priests Mariano Gómez, José Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora, executed in 1872.
Mi Último Adiós (1896)
An untitled poem of fourteen stanzas written in his cell at Fort Santiago in the last hours before his execution, and hidden — by his own account to his family — inside an alcohol stove. It bids farewell to his beloved country and asks nothing for himself. The name by which the world knows it, Mi Último Adiós, was given later by others. It has since been translated into scores of languages, and its Tagalog rendering by Andrés Bonifacio carried it into the revolution.
Other Writings
A la Juventud Filipina (1879)
A prize-winning poem addressing the Filipino youth as the fair hope of the fatherland — the first time a Filipino was so honoured in a Manila literary contest.
El Consejo de los Dioses (1880)
An allegorical drama in Spanish that won first prize in a competition marking the tercentenary of Cervantes.
Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, annotated (1890)
Rizal's edition of Antonio de Morga's 1609 chronicle, footnoted in the British Museum to argue that a developed pre-Hispanic civilisation had existed in the islands.
Filipinas dentro de cien años (1889–90)
“The Philippines a Century Hence” — an essay forecasting the end of Spanish rule and warning of the powers that might succeed it.
Sobre la indolencia de los filipinos (1890)
“On the Indolence of the Filipinos” — a rebuttal arguing that the supposed idleness of the native was the consequence, not the cause, of colonial misrule.
Letters and correspondence
Thousands of pages to his family, to fellow propagandists, and above all to Ferdinand Blumentritt — a decade-long friendship conducted almost entirely by post.