"A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles.

There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body.

In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef’s boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.

Sensuous and surprising, joyous and bitingly sharp, told in language as alluring as it is original, Land of Milk and Honey lays provocatively bare the ethics of seeking pleasure in a dying world. It is a daringly imaginative exploration of desire and deception, privilege and faith, and the roles we play to survive. Most of all, it is a love letter to food, to wild delight, and to the transformative power of a woman embracing her own appetite." - Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

I have put off writing about this book as I simply don’t know where to begin. I even loaned my copy to a friend and begged her to immediately read it, just so I could discuss it with someone else. There is so much to unpack in so few pages, and I can honestly say that I’ve been thinking about an aspect of this novel at least once a day.

There's no way to describe this writing other than poetry; non-stop, neverending, famished poetry. This book is pure literary fiction, and if I had to compare it to anything else. The closest i can think of is Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart for the intersection of Asian identity and food, but even that doesn’t feel quite right.

Okay, let’s talk about the book itself. A dystopian tale of the thing we take most for granted: food. It centres itself on hunger, fullness, and greed. It took me a few chapters to get hooked, but once I was, I was hooked by this book. I loved the intricate, yet realistic, plot, although I recognise that some may disappointed to discover it is not a plot-led narrative. While set in a fascinating world, this book focuses on the stream of consciousness and experience of one woman, rather than the world’s events, which exist merely as a backdrop. I devoured it, pun very much intended.

Buy Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

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