August is Buwan ng Wika in the Philippines, dedicated to celebrating Filipino, the national language. It’s also a good time to pick out your next read from a selection of Philippine literature, in whatever language.

Team MJ would like to highlight national hero Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not) as this week’s read, also the August book selection for The Filipino Group (TFG) on Goodreads.

Description from Goodreads: In more than a century since its appearance, José Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere has become widely known as the great novel of the Philippines. A passionate love story set against the ugly political backdrop of repression, torture, and murder, “The Noli,” as it is called in the Philippines, 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.

This new translation includes an extensive introduction and notes that draw on a wealth of Rizal scholarship This is the first work of Filipino literature to be published in Penguin Classics

Read it now on Amazon Kindle: Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not)

You can also join book blogger Kikay Reader on her Pinoy Reading Challenge and spend the rest of the month on more local reads.