Ronilac bisera

The story is set in the second half of the 20th century, and the narrator is a middle-aged journalist and writer Ivan Dolinar (according to many, the author's alter ego). The novel is confessional in nature – Ivan, faced with his own life crisis, illness and a sense of failure, recalls his childhood and youth in the small Dalmatian town of Komiža on the island of Vis during the 1950s and 1960s. The central figure of the past is a mysterious pearl diver – an old Japanese man named Takashi, who in post-war Yugoslavia, at a time when pearl diving was almost a forgotten skill, comes to Komiža and lives a secluded life. The boy Ivan meets him and becomes obsessed with him: Takashi becomes for him a symbol of an unattainable, pure, almost mythical world – a world that is lost and can never be returned. The diver says almost nothing, but his appearance, dignity and silence leave an indelible mark on the boy's imagination.