By Silvia Montoya, Director of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
This piece was also published by the Global Reading Network.
In his short story “Instructions to climb a ladder,” Julio Cortazar uses more than 380 words to explain an action that, you would think, requires no explanation at all. He writes, for example: “The first steps are always the most difficult, just to acquire the coordination needed.” He also notes the coincidence of the raising of “the foot” and “the foot” of the ladder.