Background
Horvat was born in Kotoriba, Međimurje County, at the time in Austria-Hungary.
Horvat was born in Kotoriba, Međimurje County, at the time in Austria-Hungary.
He was the author of many novels, short stories, dramas, screenplays, essays and radio dramas, translated into at least nine languages, including Russian, Chinese and Esperanto. During World World War II he fought in Yugoslav Partisans, which later inspired the novel Mačak pod šljemom (Tomcat under a Helmet, 1962) which had a somewhat ironical view of the partisan movement, adapted both into a feature film and a miniseries. The screenplay Ciguli Miguli (1952), critical of bureaucracy, briefly brought him into disfavour with the Communist party authorities, on which occasion he turned to sailing.
In mid-1960s Horvat and his family sailed the world in the sailing yacht Besa, and his travel journal Besa–brodski dnevnik (Besa–Ship"s Log, 1973) became a best-seller.
After a period of deep crisis Horvat published two acclaimed novels inspired by these events, Operacija "Stonoga" (Operation "Centipede", 1982), about a search for a lost island in the Atlantic, and Waitapu (1984), about a Pacific Islander boy who decides to sail across a taboo line. His last work is a memoir titled Svjedok prolaznosti (A Witness to Impermanence, 2005).
Horvat attended the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb and served as a secretary of Matica hrvatska.