Land of Milk and Honey
By C Pam Zhang
Riverhead Books, September 26, 2023
The award-winning author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold returns with a rapturous and revelatory novel about a young chef whose discovery of pleasure alters her life and, indirectly, the world
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.
Selected Praise
“A book of appetite, rich with ideas and emotion. Zhang possesses a wonderfully bold and playful imagination; this novel is further proof of her extraordinary talent.” —Katie Kitamura, bestselling author of Intimacies
“The way Zhang writes about food and desire and human failings is exquisite—sensually detailed, at times visceral. This is a tremendous novel that explores the way people will break when the world itself is broken. Land of Milk and Honey is truly exceptional.” —Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist
“It’s rare to read anything that feels this unique. A richly imagined, ambitious, and haunting novel that is striking for its deft juxtaposition of small, human moments with larger concerns about the world.” —Gabrielle Zevin, New York Times bestselling author of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
“A sharp, sensual piece of art…This is an incredible exploration of whether it is possible to preserve one’s art when answering to a master that is not yourself. When I read I’m always searching for pleasure, for the want, and this book helped me feel something.” —Raven Leilani, New York Times bestselling author of Luster
“No one writes like C. Pam Zhang. Ferocious, sensual, and all consuming, Land of Milk and Honey is both a heartsick elegy for a world we are on the verge of losing and vibrant homage to pleasure and appetite. This book swallowed me whole and spit me out changed in the best way: buzzing, astonished, and alive.” —Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye, Vitamin
“A brilliant, all-too-prescient novel. Extraordinary in its prose, vision, and power, Land of Milk and Honey is a triumph of a book to devour now and to treasure through the ages.”—R.O. Kwon, bestselling author of The Incendiaries
“A twelve-course feast for the senses and intellect. C Pam Zhang is one of the most talented novelists writing today, and she has given us a novel that is original and painful and sensuous, a honey-and-acid tasting menu exploring pleasure, loss, sex, power, and resurrection.” —Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of National Book Award Finalist All This Could Be Different
“A dazzling, virtuosic meditation on seeking joy amid tragedy, beauty amid ruin. As hypnotic as it is profound, Land of Milk and Honey showcases C Pam Zhang’s singular talent.” —Kirstin Chen, New York Times bestselling author of Counterfeit
“Gorgeous. What a delicious world Zhang has created—full of so much wonder. I’ll be thinking for a long time about what this novel says about desire and morality; what it means to try to stave off extinction of oneself and world; what happens when we are forced to reckon with the lies we’ve spent years telling ourselves.” —Kat Chow, author of Seeing Ghosts
“C Pam Zhang is an intoxicating and fearless prose stylist who seems to invent a new language with each book. . . the incantatory rhythms of desire that power [the novel] serve us horror and pleasure in each bite.” —Meng Jin, author of Little Gods
“Intoxicating, timely, and beautifully written. Pam Zhang’s exquisite prose and prodigious talents are pushed to their brink in her new, dazzling novel.” —Jamil Jan Kochai, author of National Book Award Finalist The Haunting of Hajji Hotak
About the Author
Born in Beijing, C Pam Zhang is mostly an artifact of the United States. She is the author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold, winner of the Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award and the Asian/Pacific Award for Literature; nominated for the Booker Prize; and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and a Lambda Literary Award. Zhang’s writing appears in Best American Short Stories, The Cut, McSweeney’s Quarterly, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree.