A 'romance of many dimensions' that has fascinated generations of readers with its clever blend of social satire and mathematical theory, the Penguin Classics edition of Edwin A. Abbott's Flatland introduction by Alan Lightman. A work that continues to pose provocative questions about perception and reality, Flatland is a brilliant parody of Victorian society where all existence is limited to length and breadth - its inhabitants unable even to imagine a third dimension. The amiable narrator, A Square, provides an overview of this fantastic world - its physics and metaphysics, its history,...

The book that influenced writers from Carl Sagan to Stephen Hawking, Flatland is set in a two-dimensional world where life exists only in lines and shapes - until one of its inhabitants, 'A. Square', has his perspective transformed forever. This brilliantly eccentric classic is an invitation to see beyond our own reality. 'At once a playful brainteaser about geometry, a pointed satire of Victorian manners - and a strangely compelling argument about the greatest mysteries of the Universe' Wall Street Journal 'Flatland could lead to very profound thought about our Universe and ourselves'...