The Very Odd Bookclub – February

The February book will be Flatland by Edwin A Abbot.

Written in 1884 the book, which would be considered a novella by today’s standards, is of particular interest because of the two very different themes it incorporates. The setting of the book is a two-dimensional world called Flatland and is told from the perspective of Square, one of its inhabitants. And a square is what he literally is, as all the natives of Flatland are either polygons (male) or line segments (female). Through the complex social hierarchy of the Flatland polygons, Abbot comments on Victorian society. At the same time he also explores ideas of dimensional perception through Square’s attempts to comprehend the idea of three dimensions communicated to him by a strange visitor called ‘Sphere’.