C Pam Zhang serves up a dystopian suspense

The unhinged autocrat is a familiar figure in literature — think King Lear — but the fat cat in C Pam Zhang’s dystopian novel, Land of Milk and Honey, has an updated Elon Musk vibe. In a not-too-distant world, where most plant and animal species have been smothered by a smog that blankets the planet, human beings largely subsist on bags of “mung-protein-soy-algal flour distributed by the government.”

But not Zhang’s unnamed entrepreneur, who’s bought himself a mountaintop in Italy where the sun still shines. He’s leased shares of this land to wealthy investors and lured top scientists to work on “de-extinction” teams, where they cultivate animals and precious seeds in underground farms and orchards. Like Musk with his SpaceX, this guy also has the ultimate Plan B in the works, should Planet Earth be irredeemably lost.

The narrator of Land of Milk and Honey is also unnamed. She’s a young Asian American chef who finds herself stuck in England when America’s borders close and also stuck in a profession without a future. The menus of the few restaurants that remain cater to a growing demand for nativist recipes. The chef tells us that:

As they shut borders to refugees, so countries shut their palates to all but those cuisines deemed essential. In England, the shrinking supplies of frozen fish were reserved for kippers, or gray renditions of cod and chips — and, of course, a few atrociously expensive French preparations …

In desperation, the chef applies for a job at the so-called “elite research community” presided over by the mogul, or, as she will refer to him, “my employer.” Her stated job is to whip up extravagant meals to delight the tastebuds of the…