#classicretelling

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has haunted literature for over a century, but what if the river could speak from both sides? Soul of Africa by DC Cowan offers a daring counter-narrative that transforms Conrad’s infamous tale through magical realism, ancestral power, and African spirituality. While Kurtz spirals into colonial madness, he’s watched—and ultimately saved—by a tribal seer whose…

Jazz pulses through open windows. Champagne glitters like false promises. And somewhere in Sugar Hill, a man named Jules Gatsby throws the most extravagant parties Harlem has ever seen—all for a love that might already be lost. DC Cowan’s The Great Gatsby of Sugar Hill reimagines F. Scott Fitzgerald’s timeless masterpiece through the vibrant lens of 1920s Harlem’s Jazz Age, where Black excellence…

What if history’s most famous prisoner wasn’t European at all? DMC Cowan’s The Black Man in the Iron Mask reimagines Alexandre Dumas’s legendary mystery through the lens of Caribbean royalty, political conspiracy, and a secret that could destroy a kingdom. In the Kingdom of Haiti, a masked prisoner is held in the fortress dungeon of Cap-Haïtien. No one knows his name. No one sees his face. But…

In a future where the skies themselves have become the last frontier, obsession takes flight. Captain Ahab and the White Skywhale by Cloud Aurelius reimagines Melville’s Moby-Dick as an Afrofuturist sky epic where ancient prophecy meets cosmic technology. Captain Abasi Jeté—part man, part machine, wholly consumed by vengeance—hunts the White Skywhale through upper cloud currents of shattered…

What if the most brilliant mind in France lived in the shadow of a nose too large to ignore? Cyrano de Vinci by DMC Cowan reimagines Edmond Rostand’s classic play as a profoundly moving novel about genius, disability, and the courage to love when the world refuses to see you whole. Cyrano de Vinci is descended from Leonardo da Vinci—a poet, swordsman, and inventor of Greek and Italian blood…

He was a prince. A rebel. A ghost beneath the sea. Captain Nemo, The Exiled Prince by Cloud Aurelius restores Jules Verne’s mysterious captain to his true identity as Prince Dakkar of Bundelkhand—an Indian royal who lost everything in the 1857 Rebellion against British rule. Betrayed by empire and shattered by grief, Dakkar vanished from the surface world and returned as Captain Nemo, commander…