The Eighth Wonder of the World

In his novel The Eighth Wonder of the World, Plevnes takes his absurd sense of humor and undeniable wit on a search for a common ground in an uncommon world. His protagonist Alexandar Simsar during the last 3.3 seconds of his life in Berlin in 1989 (weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall), envisions the creation of a monument—an eighth wonder of the world—that would embrace all humanity in all its layers and countenances. Plevnes’s preoccupation with the role of beauty in the context of social, religious, and cultural differences is front and center, as is his central question: Does humanism have a prospect of survival in the future of humankind? Plevnes suggests that survival and idealism can be found in beauty and art —and that only beauty and art have the power to save the world.