Depending how you look at it, the bleak setting of C. Pam Zhang’s second novel could be a dystopian future or alternate present-day — a world where a thick smog spreads across the planet, killing most animals and food crops. In “Land of Milk and Honey,” an Asian American chef is stranded in England when the U.S. borders close. She’s trying to build a menu out of the only plentiful foodstuff left on Earth, a substance derived from mung beans, soy and algae and distributed by the government.
So our unnamed narrator applies for a job at a mountaintop colony in Italy, where an Elon Musk-like character has established a haven for the uber-rich. This enigmatic mogul, whom the narrator refers to only as “my employer,” and his daughter Aida offer a lush life above the smog line. Produce grows plentiful here, thanks to seed banks and sunshine, and laboratories bring livestock and all manner of other creatures back from extinction.
While our narrator rediscovers the pleasures of smell, taste and touch, she struggles with the moral complexities of her new role, catering to the upper class. Surprisingly, there are no clear heroes or villains here. Aida explains that the biobank uses investors’ money to create sustainable ways of feeding the world, and redistributing the wealth would destroy the future.
Zhang’s writing is visceral, full of blood and muscle, especially when describing the lavish buffets served to the privileged few: “Those meals of yolk and sudden juice, of lark’s bones crunching in the molars like the detonation of a small star, a black hole that swallows and makes irrelevant, infinitesimal, what came before and what came after.”
Zhang’s debut novel, “How Much of These Hills is Gold,” was long-listed for the Booker Prize and introduced the author’s electrifying voice. “Land of Milk and Honey” is a spectacular, delectable follow-up that establishes her as a literary force.
