After the world was taken over by a smog that killed the plants and caused animals to die, food has pretty much disappeared and life-expectancy goes down every generation. Stuck in these circumstances and grieving the death of her mother, the narrator of this novel is desperate for an escape and so she takes a job as a private chef in an elite research community: the Land of Milk and Honey. 
What presented itself as an escape, however, is a different form of imprisonment enforced by her eerie employer and his enigmatic daughter. As the novel progresses, the narrator slowly discovers that there is much going on below the surface in this place and she becomes more entangled in the dark nature of her new home, a place where the researchers have abundant foods of all kind and live a very lavish, grand lifestyle while the rest of the world starves. 
 
Land of Milk and Honey is a deep dive into the ways in which privilege and power manifest through food. While looking at themes of ethics, privilege, desire and greed it ultimately asks the questions: What becomes justifiable when it is survival that is at stake? Who gets to make decisions for the entire humanity? And what are the consequences of the rich and powerful having the leading voice?
 
Zhang’s writing is lyrical, each word carefully chosen to craft a world that feels both beautiful and deeply unsettling.