The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break

Five thousand years out of the labyrinth the Minotaur finds himself in the American South living in a trailer park and working as a line cook at a steakhouse. No longer a devourer of human flesh the Minotaur is a socially inept lonely creature with very human needs. But over a two-week period as his life dissolves into chaos this broken and alienated immortal awakens to the possibility for happiness and to the capacity for love.Steven Sherrill is a graduate of UNC Charlotte and holds an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The recipient of a NEA Fellowship for Fiction he has published four novels and one book of poetry. His debut novel The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break was published in the UK and translated into eight languages. Neil Gaiman selected it as one of six audio books to launch “Neil Gaiman Presents” for Audible. A prolific painter and nascent musician Sherrill is now a professor of English & Integrative Arts at Penn State Altoona. . . . [W]ry melancholy beautiful first novel . . . —The GuardianSherrill''s narrative with its dreamlike pace shows myth coexisting with reality as naturally as it does in ancient epic. —Publishers WeeklyWise and ingenious —The New York Times