Amok

Plowed right through Amok by Stefan Zweig. Of course it was only 70 something pages long so wasn't too much of a challenge. It was the story of a doctor in the Dutch East Indies torn between his medical duty to help and his mixed emotions. Not exactly my favorite selection but at least I found out where we get the term running amok from:

The term came from when the British and Portuguese were trying to take over Malaya. Assuming the Malay people were extremely passive and easily pushed aside, they invaded the territories, somewhat successfully, but the natives rebelled, shocking the British and the Portuguese, leaving them astounded, hence the allegations of "crazy" and "wild" "jungle people"

The word was used by the British to describe to run-a-muck, or murder indiscriminately It was later used in India during the British Empire, to describe an elephant gone mad, separated from its herd, running wild and causing devastation. The word was made popular by the colonial tales of Rudyard Kipling.

Although commonly used in a colloquial and less-violent sense, the phrase is particularly associated with a specific sociopathic culture-bound syndrome in Malaysian culture. In a typical case of running amok, a male who has shown no previous sign of anger or any inclination to violence will acquire a weapon and, in a sudden frenzy, will attempt to kill or seriously injure anyone he encounters. Amok episodes of this kind normally end with the attacker being killed by bystanders, or committing suicide.

So next I plan on finishing the other three stories in this collection and then reading another e-book. Which will be (drumroll).....wait for it.....wait for it......wait for it..... Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe. Tawdry!