This study, focusing on Latin American literature, discusses the motif of a variety of worlds as a key concept of the modern novel in terms of genre, culture, and fiction theory: the world of the modern novel is always already in contact with another one. This concept, developed against the backdrop of (literary) history, goes hand in hand with the theoretical assumption that modern novel forms have brought about a turn in genre theory. Differently from genuine poetics, genre theory is always also concerned with and contingent on a certain history/back story.