The author attemptsto capture a selection ofissues that she considersvital for the debateon theLatin-Americancontinent as such. The research toolisliterary productionofasingle author,Alejo Carpentier.Hiscreationwasselectedout of manyoutstanding works of Latin American writers. The first part of the article, Carpentier's method, presents the justificationfor choosing this particular writer. Init, the author offersbibliographical and literary data based on his manifestos (Tientos y diferencias) and the very “core” of his literary production, i.e. stories (Guerra del tiempo, Concierto barroco) and novels (Reinode este mundo, Pasos perdidos, Elsiglo de las luces, El recurso delmétodo, La consagración de la primavera, El arpa y la som-bra). If the value of literary worksis to be estimated (among otherthings) according to the universality of its message, all the works listedabove become an inherent part of auniversal paradigm. Complicated trajectoriesof protagonists’lives (Sophia, Esteban, Wiera, Enrique, First Official...), their personalities,and their entanglement inthe Wheels ofHistorytranscendborders of the continent. Hence the (controversial) common interpretational routesforK.andtheTrapped. Individualsand societiesduring wartime, internal battle of identities, revolutionarydia-lectics, relations of power, acts of open and hidden violence, antinomies of tradition and mo-dernity, conflicts of spirituality and rationality, changes of individual and collective conscious-ness, structural social inequalities, colonial oppression, mechanisms of resistance, cultural, po-litical and economic imperialism, geopolitical fields of game–all theseissues (and manymore) can be found in Carpentier’s novels. The second partidentifies eleven ofCarpentier’s Latin-American contexts. They includeracial, economic, chthonic, political, bourgeois, distance-and proportion-related, chronological inconsistency-related, cultural, culinary, lighting-related,andideological aspects. Particular focus is dedicated toracial (Pasos perdidos), economic (Guerra del tiempo) and political-military (El recurso delmétodo) issues. The third part, a critical ap-proachto culture, follows up onprevious matterswith special consideration ofthe following three: confrontation of cultures(El arpa y la sombra), humanitarianism and modernity (El siglo de las luces), and the beginnings and ends of the Western World(La consagración de la pri-mavera). Finally, the text concludes witha range ofquestionsonculture, society, and politics,with the most prominent being: What is our culture,when reflectedinCarpentier’s mirror?Keywords: Latin America, Alejo Carpentier, continent, context(s), literature.