Get The BookBrowse Anthology, our 880 page collection of our past decade of Best of Year reviews, now available in hardcover!

Summary and Reviews of Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

Land of Milk and Honey

A Novel

by C Pam Zhang
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (8):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • First Published:
  • Sep 26, 2023, 240 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Sep 2024, 240 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

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.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

Land of Milk and Honey is direct in its social commentary, and despite a tragic storyline, it is fiercely optimistic in what it has to say about the nature and future of humanity. Its sharply-written, revelatory moments, appearing as they do between scenes of excess and waste, serve as a reminder that the treasures of the world are unquantifiable and unpredictable, that none of us really know what will bring us joy, what will save us — or humanity. And that, sometimes, what lies on the other side of this lack of knowledge is very, very good...continued

Full Review (990 words)

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today.

(Reviewed by Elisabeth Cook).

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



Jian Bing

Jian-bing, which looks like a folded crepeIn C Pam Zhang's Land of Milk and Honey, which takes place in a fictional near-future of worsening climate change and severely reduced biodiversity, the main character chooses to work as an elite chef for a wealthy employer on an isolated mountain in Italy rather than give up access to the ingredients she loves that are rapidly vanishing from mainstream society. However, she experiences doubt about this choice when she takes an uncharacteristic trip into the smog-ridden depths of Milan, where a Chinatown vendor serves her a reimagined version of the beloved street food jian bing (pronounced "JEN-bing"), cobbled together from the scant forms of nourishment still available to people of ordinary means. It reminds the narrator of her childhood ...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Land of Milk and Honey, try these:

  • Fruit of the Dead jacket

    Fruit of the Dead

    by Rachel Lyon

    Published 2025

    About this book

    More by this author

    An electric contemporary reimagining of the myth of Persephone and Demeter set over the course of one summer on a lush private island, about addiction and sex, family and independence, and who holds the power in a modern underworld.

  • But the Girl jacket

    But the Girl

    by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu

    Published 2024

    About this book

    "Having been Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina and Esther Greenwood all my life, my writing was an opportunity for the reader to have to be me…"

We have 7 read-alikes for Land of Milk and Honey, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by C Pam Zhang
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris
    by Evie Woods
    From the million-copy bestselling author of The Lost Bookshop.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    One Death at a Time
    by Abbi Waxman

    A cranky ex-actress and her Gen Z sobriety sponsor team up to solve a murder that could send her back to prison in this dazzling mystery.

  • Book Jacket

    The Fairbanks Four
    by Brian Patrick O’Donoghue

    One murder, four guilty convictions, and a community determined to find justice.

  • Book Jacket

    Happy Land
    by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

    From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel about a family's secret ties to a vanished American Kingdom.

  • Book Jacket

    The Seven O'Clock Club
    by Amelia Ireland

    Four strangers join an experimental treatment to heal broken hearts in Amelia Ireland's heartfelt debut novel.

Who Said...

I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now only that place where the books are ...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

J of A T, M of N

and be entered to win..