Witty and engaging essays from the writer hailed as the equal of George Orwell and Edmund Wilson. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "that most rambunctious of all critics--an iconoclast," Hans Magnus Enzensberger is the leading German social critic of his generation. For more than forty years, Enzensberger's engaging and witty essays have won acclaim worldwide. "Zig Zag" presents Enzensberger's most recant work along with his most important essays. Covering a wide range of contemporary politics and culture, the book includes Enzensberger's provocative essays on such topics as the parallels between Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein and the recurrence of fascism in Western Europe. "Zig Zag" also features Enzensberger's classic pieces on contemporary culture, a fascinating recent study of the transformation of luxury, and an amusing "obituary for fashion," in which Enzensberger laments Western style's decline into a kind of studied casualness. "Zig Zag" shows us why Enzensberger has become the master of cultural criticism, with work that never fails to surprise and to provoke.