Big Nobody – Alex Kadis

Her mum answered the phone and shouted, “Soraya! Phone. For you. Again. It’s Constance.” Again? How come Soraya was getting phone calls? She was a pain in the hole. No one phoned me. Was there a secret phoning club that I wasn’t a part of? Probably, actually. She took ages coming to the phone, which made me anxious, because The Fat Murderer AKA The Cypriot Ebenezer Scrooge—Ebezaki Scroogiopoullos—would go nuclear if the quarterly phone bill exceeded 20p.

When Soraya finally made her glacially slow passage to the phone, she was full of news. “Are you calling to talk about Mizz Liz Liddle?” she said. “Ms.,” I corrected. “What about her?” “She’s only gone and shacked up with Ms. Jayne Fullerlove.” “How do you know?” I asked, frostily. Ms. Liz Liddle was mine, not hers, and I didn’t like not being in the know.

“My mum knows someone who knows Ms. Fullerlove’s husband, and he told her at their yoga class.” Soraya, not bothering to pause for breath nor for me to get a word in edgewise, concluded that this was not just concrete but incontrovertible proof that Ms. Liz Liddle had finally undergone a full sex change and had a penis sewn on, which would have been taken from a male corpse. I said I didn’t think that was a thing.

Soraya insisted it was, because her uncle had registered as an organ donor in the event of his death and she’d seen the small print. You had to promise to donate all your organs, of which a penis was one. It would have to be worked with a pump, though. I tried to visualize that but failed.

She then started banging on about Janice’s new boyfriend, Martin, who was “very ginger” and how Martin was going to fix Soraya up with his friend, Carl, who was also ginger, “but not as much as Martin.” And how Deborah McNichols was dating Calvin Belding, who had tried to finger her through a hole in her tights.

I had to get off the phone for two reasons: 1. Soraya’s voice was starting to grate. She was managing to both get on my nerves and depress me. 2. I did not want to hear another word about Deborah McNichols’s “hole,” nor anyone else’s genitalia come to that. Oh, and 3. She’d been yammering on for eons and Ebezaki Scroogiopoullos would burst a vein when he saw the phone bill. 4. And, most importantly, I had started to think that Soraya might be one sandwich short of a picnic.

And 5.

Copyright © 2026 by Alex Kadis Penguin Random House values and supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

Please note that no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. Published in the United Kingdom by Hutchinson Heinemann, an imprint of Penguin Random House UK, London. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kadis, Alex author Title: Big nobody: a novel / Alex Kadis. Description: First edition. | New York, NY: Random House, 2026.

Identifiers: LCCN 2025033918 (print) | LCCN 2025033919 (ebook) | ISBN 9798217153794 hardcover | ISBN 9798217153817 ebook Subjects: LCGFT: Bildungsromans | Novels | Fiction Classification: LCC PR6111.A35 B54 2026 (print) | LCC PR6111.A35 (ebook) LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2025033918 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2025033919 Ebook ISBN 9798217153817 Book Team: Production editor: Robert Siek • Managing editor: Rebecca Berlant • Production manager: Sandra Sjursen • Proofreaders: Robin Slutzky, Susan Gutentag, JoAnna Kremer, and Nicole Ramirez Book design by Jo Anne Metsch, adapted for ebook Cover design: Sarah Horgan Cover images: Shutterstock The authorized representative in the EU for product safety and compliance is Penguin Random House Ireland, Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin D02 YH68, Ireland.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: b2fa936200910560
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 2,400,621 bytes (2.289 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9798217153794, 9798217153817
• Pages: 312
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 477.38 minutes
• Total Words: 95,475
• Total Characters: 515,667
• Average Words per Page: 306.01
• Average Characters per Page: 1652.78

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