His first two collections of short stories, Toothpaste with Chlorophyll (1973) and Maritime Hot Baths (1980), published here for the first time in English, have long established Papadimitrakopoulos as one of the leading Greek writers, one whose work recalls such painters of the triste and ephemeral as Peter Altenberg, Sait Faik and Dezsö Kosztolányi, with here and there a maudlin, funny-sad brushstroke of James Thurber.