Book review: Huma Qureshi's debut superhero novel Zeba is a fun ride, when it doesn't let the inexperience show

The success of the Disney/Marvel miniseries Ms Marvel has led to a significant number of desi-American narratives in the Hollywood mainstream, all of a sudden — most of these stories feature first or second-generation immigrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and so on. And why not? The superhero genre already depends heavily on family drama — the origin stories of superheroes like Spider-Man, Shang-Chi and indeed Kamala Khan aka Ms Marvel herself are inextricably linked with their family histories, with the way they connect to their families and the larger communities they are a part of.

Illustration from Zeba by Huma Qureshi

The Bollywood actress Huma Qureshi’s debut novel Zeba, a superhero story, capitalizes on this formula. The book’s titular protagonist is a callous, well-off, weed-smoking, high-living young woman in New York. Zeba is a part of the ‘slacker’ subculture, content with her fancy lattes, her marijuana gummies, her “Choco-Nib Almond Milk Vegan Whey Protein Shake”. Little does she know, however, that her adoptive parents Umar and Ayesha are from the family of ‘The Great Khan’, the dictator of the (fictional) landlocked kingdom Khudir (located in the Himalayas, with India, Pakistan, China et al surrounding it).

On a visit to Khudir, Zeba discovers that she has superpowers, thanks to the magical spring of water she was abandoned in as a day-old infant. With a little help from Khudir’s incumbent band of rebels, she uses her superpowers to face off against The Great Khan. Can she deliver freedom to her family as well as her people?

Before questions like these are resolved, however, we get to know what makes Zeba tick: her likes and dislikes, her little eccentricities, her views on love and romance, her dog Doobie (hippie-speak for “joint”) the mixture of American and desi attitudes that make her an intriguing mixture of individualism and family-centric thought. I loved, for example, the descriptions of Zeba’s slacker life. The passage where she talks about flying a plane solo—while also zonked out of her head on marijuana edibles—offers plenty of laughs. Not to mention, she gets the details and the vocabulary of the stoner lifestyle spot on.

Throughout the book, there are signs that this is a book looking to reach out, especially, to young readers. Most chapters have an illustration in the size and shape of a Post-it note. The Post-it notes can offer up thoughts on why, for example, certain minor characters have just been called A, B, C and D instead of allotting them proper names. They can also offer historical or sociological context. When we meet a young eunuch called Kherun in the story, the Post-it note (helpfully, in a ‘handwritten’-style font) says:

“When a baby is born, they are assigned a biological sex—male or female—based on their genitals. But since Kherun was born intersex, with ambiguous private parts, she was branded a hijra at birth. Such children are often referred to as ‘The Third Gender’ in the Indian subcontinent. Despite her intersex anatomy, Kherun felt every bit a woman and used the pronouns She/Her in Urdu to refer to herself long before it was suitably woke to do so.”

I also liked the fact that Zeba is no shrinking violet—at one point she even pokes fun at Spider-Man’s iconic line “With great power comes great responsibility”. This is no stuffy, righteous superhero. While in Khudir, she enjoys a tryst with Bollywood superstar “RK” with the million-dollar smile and the cute butt.

Of course, this is a debut book and with that constraint comes a certain frequency of triteness and clumsy sentences. A segue passage ends with “But I fear I may be digressing too much.” A coincidence that moves the plot along is prefaced by “The stage was set for a chance meeting”. Zeba’s parents’ bond is described with the phrase “peas in a pod”. These sentences are basically what happens when early career writers are producing tens of thousands of words on a strict deadline. The lack of experience manifests itself through cliché.

However, Zeba’s story is kinetic enough to hold the reader’s attention across 200-odd pages. The familiar beats of a superhero origin story are repackaged quite effectively here, and Marvel fans in particular will appreciate the Muslim superhero’s evolution. Much like the callous, rule-breaking protagonists of countless action movies, Zeba grows up, acquires some steel in her spine and rolls into battle against tyrants. And for the most part, it’s a fun ride.

Zeba by Huma S Qureshi is published by HarperCollins India (208 pages, Rs 499)