t’s the near future and a smog has blotted out the sun. The world would have starved if it weren’t for the mung-protein-soy-algal flour distributed by the government—the only thing left to eat now that the crops and animals have died.
Such is the setting in C Pam Zhang’s novel Land of Milk & Honey, where one wealthy investor has purchased the last sunny mountaintop in Italy and leased the land to the investors who funded it. There are riots against them of the “kill the rich” variety, but it’s a high-security compound and the only way in is to join.
One chef does. She misses food, taste, and manages to get a job cooking the last vegetables harvested from their indoor labs, and the last animals bred in their research institute. Their underground zoo is a post-apocalyptic Noah’s ark, only this time it’s not God’s chosen saving the planet, it’s God’s richest.
Our investors are hated for enjoying seven-course meals while the world starves, but they might also be the world’s saviors. As our chef comes to learn, it was their research that invented the mung flour that now feeds the world. Aggrandized wealth gave them the starry-eyed ideals to solve a problem the governments couldn’t.
People really didn’t like that.
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