Land of Milk and Honey is the culinary climate change novel you didn’t know you needed.

In Land of Milk and Honey C. Pam Zhang writes a wholly original take on climate change. The reader is drawn into a strange, undeniably troubling world where the performatively grotesque greed of the ultra-rich is made palatable by the gastronomical delights, violence, and pleasure that Milk and Honey is soaked in.

Land of Milk and Honey follows an unnamed line chef who pads her resumé when a great opportunity arises for her to work at the only restaurant left unscathed from climate-related disaster. However, this ideal job soon exposes the rituals and practices of the super-wealthy for their inherent gruesomeness. While this novel is based on a dystopian premise, its characterization of the nouveau riche calls to mind current-day figures of the West Coast tech discourse, a parallel that feels striking and immediate.

The sumptuous nature of Zhang’s prose reveals how the food we’re surrounded by has the unique potential to inhabit our memories and shape our behavior in ways that are sometimes unexpected. The novel’s language of food is so lavish, so decadent, so brazen, it’s like a fruit so ripe that it splits when looked at. The tone of the book is both lush and grotesque, in a way that’s striking and powerful. Whether Zhang is describing an incredible meal, utilitarian mung bean flour, fresh fruit, or rotting meat, the reader is left completely spellbound by every luscious, disgusting detail.Land of Milk and Honey stands out as a triumphant weaving of prose, symbolism, and story to create something that feels like a modern classic. Zhang crafts a dystopian novel that explores class, race, love, pleasure, and expectation, all wrapped within delicious descriptions of food and the lush environments of the ultra-wealthy. With this book, C. Pam Zhang has created a landscape so vividly rich and complex that the reader desires to eat it all with a spoon.