But Farmer realizes that the upshot of fame is more widespread awareness of the problems Partners in Health tackles—and, ultimately, more funding for the organization, whose coffers are perennially and intentionally low, as it spends 95 percent of its charity income on its projects. And so, he says, he overcame his distaste for celebrity and cooperated with Kidder.

“Hope springs eternal that the real story—about Haiti, about the causes of poverty, about all we can do to make things better—can and must get out there,” he says. “Most of what is written about why people die of AIDS or TB in Africa is a load of crap.”

Farmer says he is confident at last that Kidder managed to see beyond the single-hero mode and tell that fuller story. For his part, Kidder says he is moving on soon to a memoir of his year of service in Vietnam—but he says it would be impossible for him to close the door on Farmer and PIH when he concludes his current book tour.

“I don’t think I’d sleep well at night if I abandoned this,” he says. “I intend to know Paul Farmer for the rest of my life.”

Kidder says he has taken to spreading Farmer’s gospel outside of any promotion for his book, “clearing whole rooms at parties boring people telling them about Haiti.” And acknowledging that his continued presence in Cange would be “worse than useless,” Kidder says he wants to convince as many people as he can to join him in donating money to PIH.

“All you have to do is give a little of your superflux, and Paul Farmer and Co. will take care of the rest,” he says.

This is, of course, no more a conventional author’s role than Mountains Beyond Mountains is a conventional book.

“It isn’t the place of a journalist to raise money for something he’s written about,” he says. “But then I think, why shouldn’t I raise money? I know I have some colleagues who would think I’m on dangerous ground saying that, but so what? That’s the way I feel.”

—Staff writer Simon W. Vozick-Levinson can be reached at vozick@fas.harvard.edu.