Flatland

Edwin Abbott

Feb 2001 · Penguin Random House Audio · Kuchazwe ngu-Patrick Frederic

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     Flatland, like our own world, is on the verge of the millenium. On the last day of the year 1999, a Square—hitherto undistinguished from the other shapes of his two-dimensional world—receives the Gospel of Three Dimensions, revealed to that world's flat inhabitants only once every a thousand years. Transformed by a truth he is unable to conceal, he is promptly condemned as a heretic. His poignant tale is itself a multi-dimensional creation, for it is not only a challenge to our most basic perceptions of everyday reality, but a sharp social satire and an illuminating mathematical treatise as well.

     

     In the tradition of fantasy and social satire that includes Gulliver's Travels , Alice in Wonderland, and Animal Farm, Abbott pokes fun at the rigid class structure and concern for appearances of his Victorian society even as he poses an underlying question that is as provoking today as it was a century ago. Could we and everything we see around us be only a cross section for worlds of higher dimensions?

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Edwin A. Abbott (1838-1926) received highest honors in mathematics, classics, and theology at St. John's College, Cambridge, and was Headmaster of the City of London School for twenty-three years. A progressive who emphasized the study of English over the traditional Greek and Latin curriculum, he wrote the classic Shakespearian Grammar as well as various works of theology.