The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break
Steven Sherrill
Available as Paperback, Paperback, eBook
2 July 2026
An unusual and unforgettable take on what it means to be an outsider, an outcast, a misfit
UNSETTLING ~ WRY ~ TENDER
An unusual and unforgettable take on what it means to be an outsider, an outcast, a misfit.
Five thousand years after having escaped Crete, the Minotaur finds himself deep in the American South, living in a trailer park and working as a line cook at Grub’s Ribs.
He leads a lonely life observing the haphazard human goings on around him, trying in vain to put his flesh-devouring past behind him. Socially inept, he is at best tolerated by mortals. But as his life dissolves into chaos, this broken and alienated immortal awakens to the possibility for happiness and capacity for connection.
“Sad, funny, disturbing – and strangely true”
Anthony Bourdain
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“A wry, melancholy, beautiful first novel … The language is everywhere precise and graceful … Genius”
guardian
“Beautifully detailed and honed … a poetic testament to the wild, unchartable experience of human loving … Sherrill’s vision is at once melancholy and deeply affirming. Somewhere in M’s inchoate mass of sensation there exists a sharp spark of hope”
observer
“Immaculate … Sherrill is a beautiful writer … he finds the drama to keep you reading, your heart in your mouth, to the conclusion’s defiant roar of hope”
telegraph
“At once ugly, tender and hopeful … Sherrill’s Minotaur allows for allusive readings but remains rootedly among us”
independent
Steven Sherrill
Steven Sherrill is the author of five novels, a collection of poetry and a banjo laden Minotaur heavy memoir. He earned a community college welding diploma and an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Recently retired from Penn State University as Professor of English and Integrative Arts, he may spend the next decade making puppets.
stevensherrill.com
