NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR, HARPER'S BAZAAR, TOWN & COUNTRY, KIRKUS REVIEWS, ESQUIRE, ELECTRIC LITERATURE, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN AND MORE!
“One of the most pleasurable, inventive reads of the year… fiendishly, deliciously fun."—San Francisco Chronicle
"A profound exploration of human nature, the allure of pleasure and the choices we make in the face of adversity.”—NPR, "Books We Love"
“It’s rare to read anything that feels this unique.” –GABRIELLE ZEVIN, New York Times bestselling author of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
"Land of Milk and Honey is truly exceptional."–ROXANE GAY, New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist
“Asharp, sensual piece of art.”–RAVEN LEILANI, New York Times bestselling author of Luster
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.
C Pam Zhang 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 American Award for Literature[CE1] , long-listed for the Booker Prize, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and a New York Public Library Cullman Fellow.
ISBN: 9780593538241 Format: Hardback Pages: 240 Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group Published: September 26, 2023
Praise for Land of Milk and Honey:
“Dwells with keen intelligence and rich insight at this nexus of food, pleasure, privilege and catastrophe, offering a mouthful of nectar that tastes faintly of blood.” —The New York Times
"Gloriously lush. Zhang's sensuous style makes us see, smell and, above all, taste the lure of that sun-dappled mountain enclave. . . An atmospheric and poetically suspenseful novel about all manner of appetites: for power, food, love, life."—NPR/Fresh Air
“Haunting. . .[Foodies] will find Land of Milk and Honey a gourmand’s dream. . .tense, unnerving and creepy. . .an extremely atmospheric novel about the interplay of environmental destruction and class. The bittersweet aftertaste will leave you considering what you’d be willing to do — or resist doing — to experience the most essential pleasure.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"A sensory fantasia, rich in luscious descriptions of food, sex, and nature. In these beguiling pages, Zhang tells a powerful story about the thorny intersections of privilege and pleasure."—Esquire
Land of Milk and Honey has also appeared on these book lists
