These enchanted things include golden horses that run wildly underground beneath the prison, little men equipped with pick-axes who are in the walls, and flibber-gibbets, creatures that eat human flesh and subsist on the warmth of death itself. “The most wonderful enchanted things happen here – the most enchanted things you can imagine,” says the narrator. Loath to be dispirited in the dark dungeon, the narrator finds rays of light in the various books he reads and the reaffirming images he conjures in his mind. He left the hospital and found refuge in the prison library until, when unavoidably prodded, he beat another man so badly that he was placed in solitary confinement. The narrator explains that he was placed in a mental hospital as a child, where he remained until he did something “too terrible to name” to another child at the age of 18. The narrator resides on death-row in the underground dungeon, which he describes as “enchanted” because its inhabitants are under the spell of death. Omnisciently narrated by a nameless man who has been mute since age six, the story begins in an old, unnamed prison. The Enchanted has been called “a stunning first novel” by Publishers Weekly, an “impressive debut” by Library Journal, and “evocative” by Booklist. The novel explores themes of identity, sympathy, redemption, imprisonment, finding beauty in pain, and the power of one’s imagination as a therapeutic escape. When an investigator known as The Lady arrives to examine the case of another prisoner named York, a death row inmate who has given up appeals after 12 years, she uncovers a harrowing truth that may lead all three of them to their improbable salvation. Set in an ancient prison made of stone somewhere in America, the story is narrated by a nameless inmate who finds solace in the darkness of solitary confinement by retreating into his own imagination. The Enchanted (2014) is the psychological and literary debut novel by American author Rene Denfeld.

The enchanted denfeld