289. Amok

Amok
Stefan Zweig
1922
Around 60 pages

It's nice that the Listmakers are giving us a reprieve from the 1000 page tomes they typically like to assign. I recently read a Jules Barne novel where he makes an allusion to Zweig. The main character approaches a woman who is reading Zweig, and hits her with this line: "So you've finally reached the end of the alphabet." By the way, that would totally work on me.

A nameless narrator meets an...eccentric doctor on a ship to Europe. The doctor tells him his story. Basically, a woman asked him to give her an abortion and he became obsessed with her. 

The doctor character is portrayed just about as sympathetically as possible. Having a disturbed and abusive man get a pass like that can be difficult to digest. But it's also an impressive feat to make the doctor's actions almost seem conscionable. 

I'm interested to see what else Zweig has in store. I shall parade around with his works, prowling for men who've read Barnes.

RATING: ***--

Interesting Facts:

The title of the book comes from the Indonesian word "amok." The term refers to people who attack others in supposedly blind rage randomly and fearlessly.

UP NEXT: Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley. I read this when I was going through my Huxley phase.