A Twisted Utopia of Abundance, Wealth, and Failed Escape
April 15, 2026
By Derek DiMatteo
American author C Pam Zhang’s novel Land of Milk and Honey is set in a near future suffering ecological collapse, and explores a scenario in which the super-rich create a secretive utopian enclave. A novel of ideas that imagines the egos and excesses such an enclave would attract, Land of Milk and Honey encourages readers to consider the consequences of refusing responsibility for environmental pollution or investing in solutions to save the planet, ultimately reminding us that there is no planet B and we must solve the problems that lay before us.
The novel begins with most of the earth blanketed by a thick fog that has caused large-scale ecological collapse, including the destruction of most farming areas and mass extinction of species (both plant and animal). The protagonist is a down-on-her-luck chef who had left America to work in England but failed, and who gets selected to work in a secretive, secluded gated community for the super-rich located on a mountain in the Italian Alps. The owner and his daughter use the chef to manipulate the emotions of wealthy investors, convincing them to pay hefty fees to live in the enclave. The main point of attraction is not only that the enclave’s landholdings are above the smog-line and thus one of the few places remaining on earth where agriculture is possible, but that they operate an extensive research facility including a food bank and seed bank of otherwise extinct plants and animals.
The enclave’s research center’s preservation of seeds and species that had either gone extinct or were now exceedingly rare is not a simple preservation of the past. Through their veneration and lustful consumption, the members of the enclave fetishize these seeds, plants, and animals of the past. They faddishly adopt diets that resemble the neolithic and the paleo, valorizing the use of ancient grains that had been uncommon long before the smog destroyed the world’s agricultural systems. But the return to these long-gone species betrays a desire to either live in the past or to pretend the present isn’t happening. At first the unnamed narrator finds these ingredients thrilling to cook with, but slowly changes her attitude as she finds their false abundance within the enclave cheapens their appeal.
Although the narrator is privileged to cook extinct and rare delicacies in the enclave, she is more compelled by the food she finds in the poverty-stricken districts of Milan. The importance of adaptability is underscored by the children on the street who spit out in disgust the ripe flesh of juicy apples brought down from the enclave’s orchards. Their palettes have changed such that they consider those apples inedible. Instead, these children crave a new style of elite cuisine, which the narrator encounters by chance: a vendor selling jian bing made improvisationally with mung-protein flour, egg substitute, soy sausage, dried cilantro, and hazelnut butter. The ingredients were all that the vendor had, and when they ran out, she would create a new version of the recipe with whatever ingredients she could find. The meal reminds her of her own mother’s creative cooking on a limited budget, and it reveals the source of the narrator’s own passion as a chef. It valorizes adaptability as a virtue.
The novel’s title is a reference to the biblical promised land, and it is a phrase that recurs roughly 20 times in the Bible. One example is in Exodus 3:8, which references God leading the Israelites out of Egypt and into “a land flowing with milk and honey.” The phrase refers to a place of agricultural abundance, where the people could prosper. Within the novel, the impoverished Italians living at the base of the Alps refers to the secretive enclave as La terra di latte e miele. The enclave is an inversion of the Biblical story in the sense that it isn’t the downtrodden who are being saved and led to the promised land but rather the ultra-rich. They have created a colony on the mountain top, but their ultimately their secret plan is to use rockets to escape to Mars—not unlike the escapist fantasies promised by billionaire-owned companies such as Blue Origin and SpaceX. In the end, the spaceship carrying the wealthiest colonists explodes before it even leaves the atmosphere.
When the utopian enclave fails and the escape to mars fails, the super-rich who were left behind change their thinking from abandoning earth to solving the pollution problem. By committing their resources to finding solutions and actually implementing them, they are able to eliminate the smog and restore the earth’s environment to its previous state. The novel does not delight in reminding us that there is no planet B. Nor does it delight in the schadenfreude of the ultra-wealthy escapists all dying whilst trying to escape. The novel’s ending clearly communicates the idea that we should solve the problems in front of us rather than spending exorbitant sums to run away, or living in the past, or sticking our heads in the sand.
References and Resources
Exodus 3:8. New King James Version of the Bible. https://www.bible.com/bible/114/EXO.3.8,17.NKJV.
Guo, Wei. “Jian Bing, Chinese Crepes (煎饼).” Red House Spice: Chinese Recipe Central. June 7, 2022. https://redhousespice.com/jian-bing-chinese-crepes/.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. Bloomsbury. 2014.
New York Public Library. “C Pam Zhang with Padma Lakshmi: Land of Milk and Honey | LIVE from NYPL.” [YouTube]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL5AXd6ln-k.
Zhang, C Pam. Land of Milk and Honey. Riverhead Books. 2023.