At Depilation Nation, “where unwanted hair comes to die,” a nameless, undocumented worker shows Yungman how to operate the Defolliculator II, which interfaces with Yungman’s SANUSwatch. A “doctorpreneur” and shareholder of SANUS, he secures Yungman a job in the Mall of America. Einstein lives in an estate called King Arthur’s Court, complete with moat and drawbridge, in a development named Custom History Valley. Set in the year 20XX-a not quite parallel but not quite future time-Yungman’s Minnesotan life is portrayed with a hard satirical edge. As Yungman tells his “Korean-ish” son, Einstein, “You can hardly call it medicine. SANUS, its new parent company, is embracing retail medicine, filling the Mall of America with outlets like Speedee Dialysis, Vaccines R US, and At Your Cervix. Yungman Kwak, MD, ob-gyn, wakes up one day to find Horse’s Breath General Hospital, where he’s worked for decades, shuttered. What begins as the narrative of an immigrant doctor’s forced retirement-setting in motion a stream of memories-becomes instead a story of adventure through a war-torn, and also farcical, world. Marie Myung-Ok Lee’s The Evening Hero is a universe of trap doors.
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