“...We had many meetings with Vasilis to write this book. At each one, there was a surprise waiting for me about his life. A life like a fairy tale, a life like a movie with great emotional intensity and a lot of emotion. Vasilis opened his heart wide and narrated the events just as they happened. It's not easy to go back to those stone years that decisively marked your life. It's also not the easiest thing to remember situations and stories filled with bitterness, sorrow, and crying. Such a confession requires courage and honesty, which Vasilis possessed to the utmost degree.

So, I will tell you about his life, and I hope to illuminate all those pieces of it that, without ever trying to hide them, he has now narrated in every detail.

He was proud of his Pontic origins, his family adventure, and the triumph of his personal career, a career that cannot be described in words. “I've lived ten lives,” he always told me, “and the love I've received cannot be compared to any gold in the world!”

And just before we finished this book, the bad news about his health came. I saw him after the surgeries quite weakened, but determined to live and happy that everything had gone well. The first thing he said to me was: “Thano, we need to talk about cancer and my health adventure in the book. The world needs to know everything about me, and above all, it must learn to fight for everything, even for cancer.” This is the greatness of the man Karra. Nothing hidden from the world that loved and revered him as a great popular singer!

The last time I met him was on Monday, December 18, 2023, a day before he entered the intensive care unit again. I went to his house. He had me read his biography in front of his wife, Stratos, and his cousin, George. I saw in his eyes, as I read the book to him, a great satisfaction from what he was hearing for the umpteenth time. He absorbed every word and every image with religious reverence. But I knew that he was in great pain, yet he did not want to show his pain at all. Many times, I avoided looking him in the eye. He had an otherworldly, beyond human appearance, filled with love and kindness.

He wanted us all to remember him like this: smiling, proud, and brave. As I was leaving, he called me close and said: “Thano, I want you to love me and think of me.”

(Excerpt from the author's preface)