The Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang
In a near-future world where industrial agriculture has ground to a halt, a chef finds work at the illicitly stocked house of a wealthy mogul
The contemporary food chain is well and truly fucked. As we stare down the climate crisis, food gets from factory farm to overpriced plate at the cost of the earth’s resources, species and people. Privileged classes and countries indulge their taste buds, while droughts, famines and food shortages starve the global majority. How do we keep eating when the systems that feed us also ravage us?
C Pam Zhang’s The Land of Milk and Honey pushes these ethical qualms of modern eating into the near future. In the author’s second novel, a smog caused by industrial agriculture has blanketed the earth and killed generations of crops. Fresh perishables are a luxury few can afford, and the majority of the world’s population is surviving on bland mung bean flour. A young, unnamed American chef trapped in western Europe finds little purpose in this food dystopia, until she applies to work in the kitchen of a private research centre owned by a wealthy mogul. There, she is given free range to cook with rare, fresh ingredients cultivated by and for the community, to impress rich investors through their stomachs.
As the chef relearns the art and pleasure of cooking, Zhang relishes in decadent descriptions of food in a world devoid of flavour. Sex and cuisine mingle as the chef begins an affair with the mogul’s daughter, and sensory satisfaction arrives with a bitter aftertaste. Intelligent and sumptuous, The Land of Milk and Honey exposes the fragility of our modern supply chains which simultaneously exploit and seduce us.
