I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.

Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows-only hard and with luminous edges-and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen. Alas, a few years ago, I should have said "my universe": but now my mind has been opened to higher views of things.

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is an 1884 satirical novella by the English schoolmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott. Writing pseudonymously as "A Square", the book used the fictional two-dimensional world of Flatland where class is determined by how many sides you possess to offer pointed observations on the social hierarchy of Victorian culture. However, the novella's more enduring contribution is its examination of dimensions. The book illuminates the social and intellectual context that produced the work as well as the timeless questions that it raises about the limits of our perception and knowledge.

Edwin Abbott Abbott (20 December 1838–12 October 1926), was an English schoolmaster and theologian, best known as the author of the novella Flatland (1884).