Mysterious psychological matters have a disturbingly powerful hold over me, explains the narrator of Stefan Zweig's novella 'The Amok Runner.' Indeed, the story of a man's extreme obsession with a woman exerts such a gripping pull that it seems to plunge the reader into psychological abysses even while attempting to understand the protagonist's actions. First published in 1922, this novella, inspired by the teachings of Sigmund Freud, soon became the title piece for Zweig's collection 'Amok: Novellas of a Passion' and has also been adapted into several films.