7 h 33 minAudiobook15 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 7 h 33 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when one feeling takes hold of a life and refuses to let go?
In Stefan Zweig’s Amok, a sleepless passenger meets a doctor aboard a ship sailing toward Europe. The doctor needs to confess. Behind his story lies a lonely station, a proud woman’s secret request, and a duty that becomes an obsession.
This collection brings together Amok, The Fantastic Night, Letter from an Unknown Woman, The Moonlit Alley, and Woman and Landscape. A writer named R. receives a letter from a woman he cannot remember. A wealthy Viennese man feels nothing amid his comforts. Across these lives, desire threatens to overwhelm judgment.
What you’ll discover
- A confession at sea Listen through the night as a lonely doctor tells a stranger what drives him.
- Love without recognition Enter a letter that holds years of secret love for a man who does not remember.
- Comfort without feeling Meet a wealthy Viennese man whose comfortable life leaves him bored and numb.
- Duty under pressure Follow a skilled physician as a private request draws his duty toward obsession.
- Desire beyond reason Explore five lives shaped by feelings that seem less like choices than unstoppable forces.
Who will love it
You will enjoy this if you love confessions, secrets told by strangers, and the inner life of obsessed people. It suits readers of psychological fiction and anyone who likes short, intense stories.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A confession needs someone to listen
- Pride turns help into a duel
- Obsession takes the shape of duty
- Weather gives desire its shape
- Wrongdoing breaks through the baron's numbness
- Devotion survives without being recognized
- Pity cannot undo possessive love
- Listening brings understanding before judgment
- Ordinary life has a thin surface
Who’s who
- The doctor in AmokA German physician exiled to a colonial station who is driven wild by a proud woman's request and cannot stop chasing her.
- The veiled EnglishwomanA cool, wealthy wife who comes to the doctor to ask for help in secret and refuses to beg.
- The BaronA numb and wealthy Viennese gentleman who wakes to feeling on race day and follows the impulse wherever it leads.
- The unknown womanA girl who falls in love at thirteen with the writer next door and spends her life waiting to be recognized.
- The novelist R.A charming, forgetful writer who gives every woman the same warm look and never learns the name of the one who loves him.
- The husband in the alleyA tight-fisted German who lost his wife through pride and now follows her through a French port begging her back.
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Amok in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Amok
by Stefan Zweig · 1922
A doctor aboard a ship tells a stranger about a woman, a bargain and a desperate run he cannot stop.
Medium level2–5 hours to read20 languages
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“Only where mystery is at work does life begin.”
In short
A crowded liner crosses the Indian Ocean under the Southern Cross. In the dark near the bow, a stranger asks a passenger whether a doctor has a duty to help, and then talks until the sky turns grey.
Amok at a glance
- Reading time
- About 5 h3 h 55 min fast, 5 h 55 min slow
- Length
- 70,900 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1922by Stefan Zweig
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A stranger on the night deck begins to talk
The first novella begins with a narrator who cannot find peace aboard the Oceania, a liner sailing from Calcutta toward Europe. His cabin is stuffy and the promenade is full of chatter. So he walks the empty deck after midnight, under stars that look like cracks in a curtain of light.
Near the bow a dry cough startles him. Someone sits in the shadow, and only a pipe ember and the glint of glasses show him. The stranger speaks German and begs the narrator to tell no one aboard that he was seen.
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Details
- First published
- 1922
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 4 h 55 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Zweig, Stefan. Amok. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/amok.
Zweig, S. (2026). Amok. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/amok (Original work published 1922)
Zweig, Stefan. Amok. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/amok.
@book{zweig2026amok,
author = {Zweig, Stefan},
title = {Amok},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/amok},
note = {First published 1922}
}
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What is Amok by Stefan Zweig about?
It is a collection of five novellas about people taken over by obsession. The title story follows a doctor in the colonies whose pride and desire for a woman drive him into a frantic chase that wrecks his life.
What does the word amok mean in the story?
The doctor explains it as a Malay fit of frenzy in which a man runs straight ahead with a dagger, cutting down all in his way. He uses it to describe his own blind pursuit.
What are the five stories in Amok?
They are Amok, The Woman and the Landscape, Fantastic Night, Letter from an Unknown Woman and Moonlit Alley. Each is a short, intense tale about one person gripped by desire, love or shame.
The author
Stefan Zweig
1881–1942 · Austrian novelist and biographer
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian writer born in Vienna in 1881. He wrote stories, novels, biographies, and essays. The Love of Erika Ewald appeared in 1904, Burning Secret in 1911, and Amok in 1922. He lived in Austria, Britain, and Brazil. He died in Petrópolis, Brazil, in 1942.
“Only where mystery is at work does life begin.”
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