Colossus: A Novel

by Ross Barkan

Overview

A stark and unsettling portrait of success, in the vein of Philip Roth and Jonathan Franzen, that revives the long-established intersection between ambition and corruption in the pursuit of the American dream.

Teddy Starr has it all. A beloved pastor in a small Midwestern town, a devoted husband and father of three, and a rising real estate magnate, he has built a life that gleams with virtue and success. Self-made in every sense, Teddy is a man of conviction, or at least it seems. But behind the pulpit and the polished smile lies a fractured past, and when a figure from that buried life reemerges, the once-sturdy walls of his world begin to fall.

As scandal and ambition collide, Colossus becomes the story of American hunger for reinvention and the blatant self-interest beneath its surface. Written with the moral gravity of Robert Penn Warren and the psychological insight of Philip Roth, Ross Barkan offers a timely update on the examination of the American identity in an age of performance and decay.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781648211775
Publisher:	Arcade
Publication date:	04/28/2026
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Ross Barkan is the author of five books, including the novel Glass Century. He's a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, a columnist for New York Magazine, and the editor-in-chief of The Metropolitan Review, a books and culture review publication. 

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Colossus

“A canny, twisty satire of all-American posturing.”—Kirkus Reviews

“The slick, rich, right-wing pastor Teddy Starr is a charismatic confidence man in the American vein (part Elmer Gantry, part Jay Gatsby, part Donald Trump).  As fast talking as he is, as amoral as he is, Barkan gives him a fascinating, complex inner life. This thrilling novel skewers the cynicism of our current moment, but it also strikingly renders the human drama of fathers and sons, the tension between legacy and possibility.”—Dana Spiotta, author of Wayward

“Ross Barkan's Colossus begins firmly inside the troubled pastoral sublime of John Updike and Richard Ford, but it's a feint—or a partial feint. What Barkan has in mind is something far more expansive: a broad interrogation of the American psyche in its myriad conflicting parts. The result is masterful, as thrillingly devious—and as brilliantly controlled—as Philip Roth's The Counterlife.”—Matthew Specktor, author of The Golden Hour: A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood

Praise for Ross Barkan

“Barkan’s ear for speech is impec­ca­ble; pages-long con­ver­sa­tions float by, with a pal­pa­ble rhythm and a clear, con­sis­tent voice.”—Benjamin Selesnick, Jewish Book Council

“A smart, stylish and original New York novel. Barkan knows the city inside and out, and Glass Century evokes the New York of the 70s as well as any recent work of fiction I can think of while also centering a powerful, decades-long love story that is as complex and believable as it is ultimately moving.”—Adelle Waldman

“Tennis and love and the city, and the insatiable fire that is history. Glass Century has it all. Barkan's novel is both a marvelous paean to NYC and a spectacularly moving novel.”—Junot Díaz

“Glass Century is old-fashioned in a good way, moving storytelling in the classic social realist style about the only taboo kink left, adultery.”—Nell Zink

“The soundtrack to Ross Barkan's new novel should be a wailing siren. Glass Century keeps pace with an anxious and changing New York as it tracks its protagonists from the Fear City day of the early seventies through September 11 and onward to the trauma of COVID-19. Generous and funny, this smart, expansive book kept me utterly engrossed.”—Christopher Sorrentino

“You won't be able to put it down. Ross Barkan captures 'the drift of time away from wherever you used to be.' You are all the characters, each scene engrossing as quicksand, sucking you in. It starts like an inverse Taming of the Shrew (you nearly plotz with laughing) and transforms into a profound meditation on marriage, tennis, family, politics and the vicissitudes of life. Glass Century, with its two main characters, Mona Glass and Saul Plotz, mirrors the monumental twin towers that loom in the novel: 'the ocean of dark sky pressed against the long, thick glass.'”—Jill Hoffman

“Barkan ambitiously reconciles the restlessness and enormity of the last half century without succumbing to the pretense and superficiality of idealism or relatability. This alone is a feat, but by its end, we have become the empire and the empire has become us.”—Zain Khalid

From the Publisher