Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

About the book

A Square introduces a world confined to two dimensions, explaining how its inhabitants recognise one another and organise their lives. His account makes geometry inseparable from social rank, education, and restrictions imposed on women. What first resembles an ingenious explanation of a mathematical puzzle gradually exposes the confidence with which a society treats its arrangements as natural. Encounters with other dimensions then put the narrator's own assumptions under pressure. Abbott uses changes of perspective to make an unfamiliar idea imaginable, while also showing how difficult it can be to carry that insight back into ordinary belief. The book's compact structure joins intellectual play to social satire, asking whether possessing knowledge in one area makes anyone less capable of prejudice or more willing to imagine another's experience.

• Perception
• Social hierarchy
• Limits of knowledge

Why read it

For a mathematical thought experiment whose changes of dimension also unsettle everyday assumptions about authority and normality.

English text