Mate Dolenc (1945), writer, translator and underwater fisherman, often uses the sea as the setting for events. The present novel, too, unfurls on a remote island in the middle of the Adriatic Sea (island of Biševo) and at moments is reminiscent of a real Crusoe island; the people, the unburdened marginality of the civilised world, the place, every corner of which is known but nevertheless newly discovered each day, time, which seems to stand still but its tireless wheel nevertheless drives life onwards. Dolenc's narrative style rolls the events into the future in a relaxed and steady rhythm and by arranging contrasts he skilfully avoids monotony. He completes everything in a single flourish, in his recognisable humorous approach: peripetia of the everyday and unusual obscurantism (the girl who feeds on the sun, the snake with a sheep's head, spirits, the statue of Poseidon on the seafloor etc.), hysterical locals and perpetual locals, children and old people, celebrating and sorrowing, life and death. There is no death, though, for the island that blackens in the tongues of flame: » A spark still glows in the interior of the island, which returns it to life. And around it is the sea, which brings life. No, the island cannot die.«