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Rizal's Own Story of His Life

José Rizal

Rizal's Own Story of His Life

Original publication
1918
Bilingual edition
June 12, 2026
Pages
69
Difficulty
★★☆
Genres
Biography and Autobiography, History
Translated from
English

Book summary

A collection published in Manila in 1918 by Austin Craig for the schoolchildren of the Philippines. In simplified language, it brings together texts in which José Rizal tells the story of his own life. He describes his childhood in Kalamba, on the shore of a large lake, his mother teaching him to read in the evening, the strict school in Biñan, then his success at the college in Manila. Other pages recall the Spanish schools of his time, his family’s quarrel with the manager of the Kalamba estate, a journey from Japan to England and his exile in Dapitan. There are also proverbs, riddles and a legend from his homeland. A simple, lively way to discover the national hero of the Philippines.

The plot

A childhood in the Philippines. A little boy grows up on the shore of a great lake. In the evening, by the light of an oil lamp, his mother teaches him to read.

The world of the book

A Spanish colony. The Philippines is a country of more than seven thousand islands, in Asia. By 1870, Spain has ruled it for three hundred years. At school, lessons are in Spanish, but at home children speak Tagalog…

The author

Doctor, writer and great traveller. As a child, José Rizal performed magic tricks that amazed his whole village. At twenty-one, he left in secret to study in Europe. He trained as an eye doctor in Madrid, Paris and…

The benefits of the bilingual method with Line-by-line synced layout

Every line of the original has its translation directly beneath it, at the same height. You never lose your place: your eye drops one line and lands on exactly the sentence it just read. This is the layout that lets you open a book in a language you barely know without ever giving up, and compare the two texts almost word for word.

The excerpt shows the method using another book from the catalogue, not this one.

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