Customer Reviews
Extraordinary tour de force - By: hw, 14 Sep 2008 
What an extraordinary book! I approached it expecting a period piece & found a masterpiece. Don't get me wrong - it's no surprise that the author was a Victorian clergyman-schoolmaster - who else would think of writing an entertaining best-seller about geometry & the fourth dimension?
Told from the perspective a respectable middle class citizen of the two-dimensional world of Flatland, this is a 120-page tour-de force. Whilst taking the reader through the imaginative steps which lead, logicallly, to the idea of four (or more) dimensions, the narrative reflects many of the social absurdities & dangerous ideas of Victorian Britain. On the lighter side, the narrator pokes gentle fun at the class system & social ambition; on the darker side he discusses eugenics, egalitarianism & the threat of unorthodox ideas.
Science fiction? Geometry? Philosophy? Satire? It's been compared to Gulliver, Erehwon, The Time Machine & Alice in Wonderland. Alice is probably the closest - but only in the sense that it's one of those rare books that demands a category of its own.
As well as the text, the Oxford World's Classics edition has a useful introduction, a good bibliography & a chronology of the life of Edwin Abbott. Highly recommended.
A classic - By: Melmoth, 29 Apr 2008 Written over 100 years ago & narrated by the solid A Square, Flatland is a brilliant fantasy about a life in a two-dimensional world at the same time as a witty satire on the Victorian view of an ordered society & a calll for a wider view of life. As well as a tour of Flatland, complete with its perfect & revered circles, noble polygons & criminal isosceles triangles (not to mention the foolishly linear women) , Mr Square also guides us on his excursions into lineland & pointland before admitting the revelation vouchsafed to him on his journey into the world of three dimensions. As Mr Square himself puts it "I exist in hope that these memoirs ... may find their way to the minds of humanity in Some Dimension, & may stir up a race of rebels who shalll refuse to be confined to limited Dimensionality"
Social Satire - By: Dychanwr, 14 Feb 2008 Please don't be deterred by those reviewers who imagine that the author shared the Flatlanders' disparaging view of women & blue-collar men. Not so. E. A. Abbott was an energetic teacher & writer as well as an Anglican priest, & he devoted a great deal of his energy to the cause of women's education, working with the leading female educators of the day in their campaign for access to universities & better opportunities for secondary education. As well as a parable & an introduction to n-dimensional geometry, Flatland is a satire on social prejudice-- on two-dimensional attitudes, in other words. The clues can be found in the book itself, but the record of Abbott's life confirms the satirical agenda. Victorian clergymen weren't alll misogynists & snobs, & to assume that Victorians in general were stuffy, biased, & repressed is both patronizing & unfair. There are bigots in every time & place, our own included, but there are always also those who are working for a better, juster world.
uniquely brilliant - By: apostrophes&arcadefire, 22 Aug 2007 
A. Square (!), trying to work out what it might be like as a cube, while we of 3 dimensions watch him & ultimately pine with him for even more dimensions. The author is clearly barmy, & a legend. And not only does it leave you in a happily confused state of mind, trying desperately to understand the nature of space, there's also some hilarious satire, & purely inspired explanations for how the whole thing would work. Although the style is sometimes difficult to follow, & it is a bit too short, Flatland is certainly worth a read.
Sends the imagination soaring - By: David Carson, 08 May 2007 I have just finished reading this little book for probably the third time. As I tend to read in bed at night just before turning out the light to go to sleep, I would lie in bed after putting the book down trying to imagine the fourth dimension. The spiritual implications throughout the book are undeniable. Once one has been touched by a higher dimension, life will never be the same. However, trying to communicate to others what one has experienced proves near impossible, as our square friend in Flatland so aptly relates.
