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Abstract: The article compares the functioning of Russian fiction works in the artistic narrative (“Manaraga”, the short story of Vladimir Sorokin) and in the space of the Slovak book market. It draws attention to the relationship between the works of fiction value and a certain literary space, that is, to the problem of a literary canon formation (pantheon) as an essential component of the literature system. The value in the text is understood as the cultural (symbolic) capital of a work of art, awarded to it by a certain institution, within which the work is functioning. To a certain extent, this perception is opposed by its identification in Sorokin’s short story with economic capital (the cost of individual publications) and the profit expectation from the sale of books by publishers, since these two antagonistic capitals – the cultural and the economic one – are, according to Pierre Bourdieu [Bourdieu 2010], an integral part of literature existence in the literary field. The value of works of fiction in these two systems is considered by the example of the Russian literature model and its hierarchy presented in “Manaraga” and on the basis of the Russian literature model that has developed over the past 30 years in the Slovak book market. The article reveals the parallels between these two systems, which indicate: firstly, Sorokin’s reflection on the Russian literature functioning in the space of world literature; secondly, the essential importance of the value attributed to individual literary texts (the status of a classical writer, or a representative of world literature), as an essential factor of the Russian literature model formation in the Slovak book market.