Rizal, one of the national heroes of the Philippines, wrote this book in 1887 while the nation was under Spanish control in order to draw attention to the social ills which beset the country at the time. It's now required reading in every secondary school in the Philippines and is considered the country's national epic.
The title quotation is extraordinarily famous: it comes from 20:17 of the Gospel of John, part of the New Testament, and is Jesus's response to Mary Magdalene when she encounters him outside his tomb after his resurrection. The translation from the Latin is Touch me not. It can also be found in Sir Thomas Wyatt's famed Tudor-era poem Whoso list to hunt (a close copy of Petrarch), as well as a painting by Titian. The phrase was used to refer to cancer of the eyelids, and Rizal – a medical student – chose it because it symbolised the people's blindness to the misdeeds of the ruling Spanish government.