Hard from Tenderness presents a captivating personal narrative that achieves two clear goals. It is both a memoir of John Taylor's 24-year companionship with Ilia Petropoulos – Taylor is the iconic translator of Petropoulos's texts and books into English – and an ideal introduction to the life and work of the passionate folklorist of the city, who shocked, entertained, opened the eyes, or enraged the modern Greeks at least since 1968, when the Rebetiko songs were first published, until his death in Paris in 2003.

On the one hand, "my life with Petropoulos," with dozens of previously unknown incidents, written with respect and love for his mentor, without indulging him. And on the other hand, what and how Petropoulos wrote, what he did and why, which subjects he illuminated first, his views and contradictions. Along with photographs, sketches, handwritten notes, and a detailed list of 74 books in their first edition.

In 1979, an intelligent, educated, and multilingual young American posted a small ad in a Greek bookstore in Paris. He was looking for a Greek collaborator, as an assistant, to translate into English the poems of Karyotakis and Ritsos. Someone named Petropoulos responded. He suggested, somewhat curtly, to exclude those specific poets because "one is dead and the other is a fool." He also announced that he was looking for a translator for his own book titled Manual of the Good Thief.

The continuation is in the pages of Hard from Tenderness...