06/06/2026
Join us to celebrate the launch of Colossus, a new novel by award-winning author and journalist .barkan.
📍 Octopus Books, 116 Third Ave., Ottawa
🗓️ Tues June 16th
🕒 Doors open at 6:30pm, program begins at 7pm.
🎟️ Please RSVP at octopusbooks.ca/barkan [link in bio]
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.
“Colossus earns its grand title. . . Family secrets are nothing new to family saga novels, but I don’t think I’ve ever read one with such diabolical ingenuity.”—Hugh Blanton, Quadrant Magazine
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.
