SOURCE: Romeu, Raquel. “Influence of Climate on the Cultures of the Jungle as Perceived by Two Latin American Novelists.” In Climate and Literature: Reflections of Environment, edited by Janet Pérez and Wendell Aycock, pp. 107-13. Lubbock, Tex.: Texas Tech University Press, 1995.

In the following essay, Romeu examines how the influence of the equatorial climate, experienced by Vargas Llosa and author Alejo Carpentier during separate jungle expeditions, impacted their writing in The Storyteller and The Lost Steps, respectively.

Differences in [climate] patterns from place to place, and changes in them from time to time, have inevitably exerted a powerful influence on human affairs. They define regions in which man must exert special efforts to avoid freezing or roasting to death. … Climate, along with soil (which is itself heavily influenced by climate), determines what plants can flourish and thus what animals—including man—can survive by eating the plants...