Noli Me Tangere

The jacket of this classic book by Filipino author Jose Rizal says that it 'sparked the Philippine Revolution.' My wife, who is from The Philippines, suggested that I read it. I think the book can help anyone who wants to understand the culture and history of the country more. But I don't think it is exclusive to one country, it can be applicable any country or people that has experienced oppression under the hands of seemingly unstoppable forces.
Written over a hundred years ago, the formidable book introduces and tells the stories of several characters who are all influenced in some way or other by the Spanish presence in their country. A little history lesson: Spanish officials lived in and attempted to colonize The Philippines for over three hundred years. They brought many things with them, not the least of which was the Catholic Church, which is still the predominant religion in The Philippines.
Although the story tells the injustices and cruelties of the Spanish against Filipinos, it deals primarily with two young lovers named Ibarra and Maria Clara. Ibarra is a man from a wealthy upbringing who has just returned from college in Europe. Upon returning, he wants to help his homeland, and if he's lucky, win the heart of his childhood sweetheart, Maria.
For awhile things seem to go okay, but Rizal favors reality instead of fantasy and things go from bad to worse for the doomed lovers. However, their story is but one among many Filipinos who's lives were irrevocably altered, and in most cases ruined, by the omnipresent powers of the Spanish government and leaders.
Rizal picks his targets out in his legendary book and takes merciless aim, exploiting them for all their hypocrisies and sins. He spends much of the book satirizing and demonizing the fathers, priests and friars of the Catholic Church in The Philippines, people who he believed, and as history has shown rightly so, to be the cause of nearly all the suffering.
One example is a story about a woman named Sisa and her two boys, Crispin and Basilio. The boys work at the parish house in town, where they are constantly accused and beaten for crimes which they did not commit. When the priests want to inflict punishment, they don't even need to prove a crime, they need only make something up and in order to continue their inhuman torture. All the while, people continue to laud the priests as holy servants of God.
Rizal seems to have picked out one-by-one the personalities he disliked or found serious fault with and exposed them through his writing. One example is the character Doña Victorina. Victorina is a native Filipina who is married to a European doctor. Because she has married a foreigner, this social climber feels that she is better than her fellow countrymen and has a condescending attitude toward them. Like the Catholic leadership, she refers to them in a derogatory as 'indios.'
Despite her incessant bragging and belittling, the truth is that her husband is a near cripple who has no real money, power or social stature, the main things that she consistently brags to others about possessing. In one humorous scene in the book, she meets another woman similar to her and the two almost get in a fistfight over who is more important in in her respective social circle, both of whom claim to include nothing but 'important' people.
Noli Me Tangere is a powerful lesson in history, political and religious cruelty and injustice and the negative effects of European colonialism.
In the conclusion of the book, the protagonist Ibarra is exiled and forced to leave his true love behind. Things didn't work out much better for the book's author and in the end Rizal's bravery and boldness did not come without a price--he was exiled, only later to be sentenced to death and killed by a firing squad because of the truth he wrote about. Like so many others who speak up against tyrannical governments and institutions, Rizal had to back up his beliefs with his life. In doing so, he became a national hero whose works continue to be studied by university students in The Philippines and scholars around the world.

One more thing, the book was originally written in Spanish. I read an English translation.