Asfa-Wossen Asserate does not intend to dictate rules to the reader - manners is not a book on etiquette. However, he keenly observes the unwritten rules of our interactions. It is worthwhile to navigate them intelligently. Is a kiss on the hand embarrassing? Are compliments becoming extinct? How vulgar is fashion? Can one praise the bourgeois? Are there ladies and gentlemen, or just men and women? Such questions, along with a hundred others, are discussed here. "The best connoisseur of a country and its society," wrote the great sociologist Georg Simmel, "is the stranger who stays." The author of this book, Ethiopian Prince Asfa-Wossen Asserate, who has lived in Germany for decades, is such a stranger. "... a magnificent, linguistically powerful portrait of our time." - Süddeutsche Zeitung.