CHRISTOPHER LADINES

A scholarly novel that can only be surpassed by Wilde's Dorian Gray. Highlighting the injustices of the catholic priests and the ruling Spanish government in the Philippines from 1600s to 1890s, Rizal exploited the allegories, thematic persuasion and ironies in exposing and often humiliating the callous and debauched mechanism that was the Church & State. Rizal's last literary work, Mi Ultimo Adios written whilst awaiting execution by the Spaniards at the behest of the corrupt catholic friars, can best be understood if one reads Noli Mi Tangere that he wrote over a decade earlier and the sequel, El Filibusterismo.