He specialised in internal medicine, gastroenterology and hepatology in Zagreb, but worked and lived in London since 1983, where he was engaged in research of the diseases of liver and AIDS.
[1] At that early stage of awareness of HIV/AIDS, Dr. Štambuk was among the first researchers deeply engaged in trying to understand the now widely known and ubiquitous disease.
Afterwards, he became Croatia's ambassador in India and Sri Lanka (1995–1998), Egypt (1998–2000) and a number of Arab countries.
[1] Since 2002, he has served as ambassador to Japan and South Korea (2005–2010), from 2011 to Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela and since 2019 to Iran.
[3][4] His English books include Incompatible animals (1995), Black wave (2009), And the sea is no more (2011), as well as contributions to the magazine Ploughshares; "Language of dismemberement/Loghat al-tamazzuq" (2000) in Arabic, "El viento de las estrellas oscuras"(2003) in Spanish with the foreword by Antonio Skármeta, "Pierre Nocturne" (2009) in French with a foreword by Guillaume Métayer, "Black wave/Kuroi nami" (2009) and "From nowhere/Museki yori" (2011) in English and Japanese, "Céu no poço" (2014), "Criação inacabada do mundo" (2015) and "O mar não está mais" (2016) in Portuguese; "Historia" (foreword Alfredo Perez Alencart), Trilce Ediciones, Salamanca, 2018; "El ruiseñor y la fortaleza" (foreword and translation Carmen Vrljicak), Krivodolpress, Buenos Aires, 2018. in Spanish.