Flatland : A Romance of Many Dimensions - Edwin A. Abbott

A friend had told me about 'Flatland' quite recently, after Nolan's recent movie about space and dimensions : Interstellar. It sounded quite fascinating but (as the introduction asserts) higher dimensions are very much a layman topic now. So I was in no rush to get to this book although it remained in my list. One fine day while ordering Borges's 'The Book of Imaginary Beings' I decided to add 'Flatland' to the order and picked it up almost immediately.

The book was way more succint than I had imagined it to be. The edition I read had a mere eighty-two pages and since I am currently a sucker for short and gripping stories I had no qualms in pushing it to the top of the list of pending books. To be honest, I did not have much expectations from the book. I had imagined it to be another treatise on the philosophy of higher dimensions and I had read enough crap about it recently to expect nothing more than a modification of the same old story. So imagine my surprise at finding myself immersed in the book and reading it cover to cover on a lazy Sunday. It is downright the most amazing book I have read in quite some time! And to think that it was written more than a century ago! I read the book with a stupid smile on my face that was a result of the incredulity of Abbott. He treats the idea of multiple dimensions with such crude simplicity that one wonders why dimensions is an abstract science anyway.

The story is narrated by "our friend Square" who is an inhabitant of Flatland. This realm of his is two dimensional and has various classes and sects of society not very different from our own (or atleast similar to what it must have been in later 1800's). There are also laws : natural and social, that govern a creature's existence and conduct in this two dimensional "Space". He addresses us, the readers in the three dimensional world, Spaceland, and tells us all about his flat world. And he talks about his vision of meeting the monarch of Lineland and receiving visions of Spaceland.

Abbott's genius is evident in every line of the book; his prose exposed in every sentence. It is the rare comination of good authorship and logically sound writing that one rarely finds in scientific literature or fictional writing. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the eigthy-two pages of this book and marvelled at the comprehensiveness with which the author treated the subjects that would have been obvious questions while switching dimensions. I do not know much of Abbott's other works but I am sure enough to start digging.