Historical adventure novel “Uleb Firm Hand” by Ukrainian writer I.V. Kovalenko is dedicated to the period of the reign of the Kyiv prince Svyatoslav in Rus', when the ancient Russian state expanded its borders, grew stronger, and entered the wide international arena. The facts accumulated by historians about that time gave the author the opportunity to choose a poignant plot. The novel traces the amazing fate of the blacksmith Uleb from the Transnistrian village of Radogoshcha and his sister Ulia, captured and taken by Byzantine soldiers to Constantinople. The action takes place either in Byzantium, then in the Pecheneg Field, or in Svyatoslav’s gridnitsa...