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  • Published: 26 September 2023
  • ISBN: 9781529153675
  • Imprint: Hutchinson Heinemann
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $37.00

Land of Milk and Honey




FROM THE BOOKER-LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF HOW MUCH OF THESE HILLS IS GOLD

A rapturous novel about a young chef whose discovery of pleasure alters her life and, indirectly, the world

'A rich novel of ideas' GUARDIAN
'A tasty treat' iNEWS
'A genius balance of page-turning and lyrical prose' INDEPENDENT
'A sharp, sensual piece of art. When I read I'm always searching for pleasure, for the want, and this book helped me feel something' RAVEN LEILANI
'It's rare to read anything that feels this unique. A richly imagined, ambitious, and haunting novel' GABRIELLE ZEVIN
'Truly exceptional' ROXANE GAY

A smog has spread. Food crops are disappearing. A chef escapes her career in London to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world's troubles. There, 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 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 alluring language, Land of Milk and Honey is a striking novel about food, sex and the intricacies of desire and longing.

Praise for C Pam Zhang:
'A blazing writer' Daisy Johnson
'Truly gifted' Sebastian Barry
'An arrestingly original writer' Sunday Times

  • Published: 26 September 2023
  • ISBN: 9781529153675
  • Imprint: Hutchinson Heinemann
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $37.00

About the author

C Pam Zhang

Born in Beijing, C Pam Zhang is mostly an artifact of the United States. She is the author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold, longlisted for for the Booker Prize, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and one of Barack Obama's favourite books of the year. Zhang's writing appears in Best American Short Stories, The Cut, McSweeney's Quarterly, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree.

Praise for Land of Milk and Honey

Land of Milk and Honey is a sharp, sensual piece of art. Zhang writes about the appetites of the body, the uneasy coexistence of scarcity and plenty, and the pleasure and debasement of what is surrendered to survive. This is an incredible exploration of whether it is possible to preserve one's art when answering to a master that is not yourself. When I read I'm always searching for pleasure, for the want, and this book helped me feel something

Raven Leilani

No one writes like C. Pam Zhang. Ferocious, sensual, and all consuming, Land of Milk and Honey is both a heartsick elegy for a world we are on the verge of losing and vibrant homage to pleasure and appetite. This book swallowed me whole and spit me out changed in the best way: buzzing, astonished, and alive

Rachel Khong

It's rare to read anything that feels this unique. A richly imagined, ambitious, and haunting novel

Gabrielle Zevin

Land of Milk and Honey is truly exceptional

Roxane Gay

A brilliant, all-too-prescient novel. Extraordinary in its prose, vision, and power, Land of Milk and Honey is a triumph of a book to devour now and to treasure through the ages

R.O. Kwon

A twelve-course feast for the senses and intellect. C Pam Zhang is one of the most talented novelists writing today, and she has given us a novel that is original and painful and sensuous, a honey-and-acid tasting menu exploring pleasure, loss, sex, power, and resurrection

Sarah Thankam Mathews

A dazzling, virtuosic meditation on seeking joy amid tragedy, beauty amid ruin. As hypnotic as it is profound, Land of Milk and Honey showcases C Pam Zhang's singular talent

Kirstin Chen

Gorgeous. What a delicious world Zhang has created-full of so much wonder. I'll be thinking for a long time about what this novel says about desire and morality; what it means to try to stave off extinction of oneself and world; what happens when we are forced to reckon with the lies we've spent years telling ourselves

Kat Chow

C Pam Zhang is an intoxicating and fearless prose stylist who seems to invent a new language with each book. . . the incantatory rhythms of desire that power [the novel] serve us horror and pleasure in each bite

Meng Jin

Intoxicating, timely, and beautifully written. Pam Zhang's exquisite prose and prodigious talents are pushed to their brink in her new, dazzling novel

Jamil Jan Kochai

A brilliant, near-future fairytale, LAND OF MILK AND HONEY is the most sensuous novel about food I've ever read

Emma Donoghue

Truly superb

Douglas Stuart

Zhang writes with the same fierce artistry, vivid detail and microscopic precision that would make even her own Michelin-star characters proud – an exceptionally and uniquely written tale of greed, optimism and the pursuit of perfection in the face of scarcity

Sofia Akel

Land of Milk and Honey is as much a parable as a novel about the murky morals of the 0.1 per cent club. Required reading for them and a tasty treat for everyone else

iNews

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

The Washington Post

It’s a captivating story that is alien without being too far-fetched. Zhang’s writing is laden with metaphors – particularly around food and sex – and while this could risk being overwritten, it fits the story perfectly. It’s a genius balance of page-turning storytelling and lyrical prose

Independent

Sensual . . . This is a rich novel of ideas, insisting on moral complexity in the end times. It’s also a startling prose hymn to food and sex, love and violence, power and resistance

Guardian

Zhang constructs an unsettling, vertiginous world. Her ornate style reflects the opulence her characters guard so closely, her command of sensory language is impressive, and it’s hard not be mesmerised by prose that is as rich and as startling as the food her protagonist prepares

Observer

This is an astounding book

Caleb Azumah Nelson