Land of Milk and Honey

Land of Milk and Honey (2023) by C. Pam Zhang is an ecological dystopian novel that follows an unnamed narrator who is employed as a chef in a world ravaged by smog. Zhang draws upon her experiences living in both China and the United States and explores Eating for Pleasure or Survival, The Divide Between the Rich and the Poor, Sexism in the Food Industry, and Humans’ Responsibility for the Earth.

Land of Milk and Honey was a New York Times Notable Book and was chosen as one of the best books of the year by NPR, Harper’s Bazaar, and Scientific American. Zhang has won the Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award and the Asian/Pacific Award for Literature. Her debut novel, How Much of These Hills Is Gold, also won several awards and was long-listed for the 2020 Booker Prize.

This guide refers to the first hardcover edition published by Riverhead Books.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide include descriptions of racism, physical assault, animal cruelty, disordered eating, and death from a fire. They also briefly mention suicidal ideation.

Plot Summary

Earth is in the middle of an ecological catastrophe. Toxic smog has covered the planet, blocking the sun, killing crops, and threatening widespread starvation. As a result, people have slaughtered most farm animals. Most restaurants are closed, and only foods derived from mung beans are left.

The unnamed narrator, a chef, lies on her job application and is hired to work in Italy at a restaurant on the top of a mountain that rises above the smog, allowing normal crops to be grown there.

The chef fails her first cooking audition, but her unnamed employer gives her another chance to create a full meal under the oversight of his daughter, Aida. Aida is beautiful and enjoys the narrator’s cooking, allowing her to stay. The narrator enjoys the work, as she can use ingredients that are extinct everywhere else, though she is hidden from the diners and rarely interacts with anyone other than Aida. After several weeks, Aida shows her secret laboratories inside the mountain, where extinct species are being cloned and cultivated. Just then, a radical Italian group attacks the mountain, intending to burn its crops. The narrator puts out the fire, receiving severe burns on her hands.

Days later, her employer informs her that she will be serving Sunday dinner for the first time and gives her unfamiliar meat to cook. As she serves the meal, pretending to speak no English, the diners assume that she is the employer’s vanished wife, Eun-Young. They enjoy the meat, which is revealed to be woolly mammoth. Her employer gives the narrator a permanent contract on the mountain, as long as she pretends to be his wife.

For a beautiful summer, the narrator act as a silent confidante for the rich guests, who debate investing in her employer’s project: to move off the mountain. The narrator becomes very close with Aida, watching Korean television and commiserating about her employer’s terrible taste. On the birthday of her employer’s wife, which the narrator celebrates as her own, she says that the name of the cake is a swear word, entertaining Aida in front of the guests. After the dinner, the narrator realizes that she is in love with Aida, and they have sex.

The next dinner is for Roman Kandinsky, one of the richest men in the world. Kandinsky is described as a tastemaker and gourmand, but he turns out to be a fairly dim and shallow person. When the narrator accidentally leaves a hair in the blood ice cream dessert, Kandinsky is enraged. The narrator and Aida grovel in front of him, but he demands more, so the employer savagely beats the narrator. Afterward, the employer apologizes and pays her extra.

To entertain Kandinsky, Aida leads a hunt for golden chimpanzees, which, Aida says, will not be able to come with them when they move. The hunt is horrifying, as is the meal after, since the cooked chimps look like burned children.

As the seasons change, everyone competes to join the community when it moves off the mountain. Their destination is revealed to be off world.

Aida takes the narrator on a trip to Milan, where they eat the street food that the chef has been craving. When they hand out apples, the children hate them. While trying to escape the children mobbing to see Aida’s dogs, Aida runs over a child, who later dies. The women are arrested, but Aida’s father speaks to the authorities and has the two women released.

The narrator, disillusioned with the project and feeling disconnected from Aida, trades her spot in the off-world community to a meteorologist. Aida tries to convince her to stay, but the narrator refuses. The severance that her employer gives her is quite large, and the narrator lives comfortably.

One day, on television, she sees a news report about the mountain opening up to reveal a rocket, which launches and explodes. The explosion convinces the ultra-wealthy to solve the issue of the smog, which includes cultivating a purifying dandelion. The narrator opens a restaurant chain and becomes immensely famous and rich. She uses her wealth to become a restaurant investor, create a foundation for women in the food industry, and build a comfortable life for her daughter.