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In C Pam Zhang’s new novel, "Land of Milk and Honey," a young chef flees a climate apocalypse to cook at a billionaire’s mountaintop refuge. Below, the author of "How Much of These Hills Is Gold" recommends six especially delicious favorite books.
'The Gastronomical Me' by M.F.K. Fisher (1943)
Fisher, in this early memoir, writes about meals, loves, losses and discoveries in a lucid, elegant style that may read to some as deceptively simple. The American food writer was in her mid-30s, living through the Second World War and looking back. In her hands, a tangerine left out on the radiator becomes the most exquisite of indulgences. Buy it here.
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'Brideshead Revisited' by Evelyn Waugh (1945)
In a preface to a later edition of this novel, Waugh chastised himself for going overboard in his rhapsodic description of meals — a response to the wartime rationing at the time of "Brideshead Revisited’s" writing. I disagree. The wines, plover’s eggs and Catholic grief are worthy of sinking one’s teeth into. Buy it here.
'Kitchen' by Banana Yoshimoto (1988)
In Yoshimoto’s work, the body is something to come home to. She writes of food as a comfort and an elegy. The young woman in this novella moves from place to place, finding her way after the death of her grandmother. Yoshimoto writes scenes that are sweet without being saccharine. They are often tempered by humor as well as knowledge of loss. Buy it here.
'Sweetbitter' by Stephanie Danler (2016)
No past, no future, but a deeply embodied present: That is the experience of the young server who narrates Danler’s novel, which captures the dizzying highs and lows of moving to and settling in New York City at 22. Oysters, obsessions and Pouilly-Fuissé. Buy it here.
'The Curious Thing' by Sandra Lim (2021)
Lim’s intelligent poetry is alive to the mind as it dwells in a body riddled with hungers, needs, contradictions, and limits. "We drink our bitter coffees on the terrace. / And the little dark stone / of work that secures me, where is it?" Buy it here.
'All This Could Be Different' by Sarah Thankam Mathews (2022)
The complicated protagonist of this novel, which was a National Book Award finalist, is almost painfully receptive to the many textures of being alive: agony and ecstasy, abrasive cool and gooey vulnerability. Especially of note: the unforgettable scenes of eating in bed in the internet age. Buy it here.
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