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reviewed Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott (Oxford World's Classics)

Edwin Abbott Abbott: Flatland (Paperback, 2006, Oxford University Press, USA) 4 stars

‘Upward, and yet not Northward.’

How would a creature limited to two dimensions be able …

Review of 'Flatland' on Goodreads

4 stars

1) '''I am indeed, in a certain sense a Circle,' replied the voice, 'and a more perfect Circle than any in Flatland; but to speak more accurately, I am many Circles in one.' Then he added more mildly, 'I have a message, dear Madam, to your husband, which I must not deliver in your presence; and, if you would suffer us to retire for a few minutes#-' But my Wife would not listen to the proposal that our august Visitor should so incommode himself, and assuring the Circle that the hour of her own retirement had long passed, with many reiterated apologies for her recent indiscretion, she at last retired to her apartment.
I glanced at the half-hour glass. The last sands had fallen. The third Millennium had begun.''

2) ''An unspeakable horror seized me. There was a darkness; then a dizzy, sickening sensation of sight that was not like seeing; I saw a Line that was no Line; Space that was not Space: I was myself, and not myself. When I could find voice, I shrieked aloud in agony, 'Either this is madness or it is Hell.' 'It is neither,' calmly replied the voice of the Sphere, 'it is Knowledge; it is Three Dimensions: open your eye once again and try to look steadily.''