The Tesseract (novel)

The Tesseract  
Author(s) Alex Garland
Country UK
Language English
Publisher Viking
Publication date 1998
Media type Print (paperback)
Pages 226
ISBN 0-670-87016-1
OCLC Number 40360022

The Tesseract is a 1998 English-language novel by Alex Garland. The story intertwines the lives of Manila gangsters, mothers and street children. The novel chronicles numerous characters in non-linear storylines and explores themes of love, adultery, fate, violence, power, and choices. It is Garland's second novel.

The term 'tesseract' is used for the three-dimensional net of the four-dimensional hypercube rather than the hypercube itself. It is a metaphor for the characters' inability to understand the causes behind the events which shape their lives: they can only visualize the superficial world they inhabit.

The book was adapted into a film, The Tesseract, which changed the setting to Bangkok. It was directed by Oxide Pang and starred Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Saskia Reeves.