John Green is a young adult novelist who wrote the 2012 book The Fault in Our Stars.

[2][3][4][5] Green became interested in tuberculosis on a visit to Sierra Leone with Partners In Health in 2019, where he became aware that it was not "a problem of the past" but an ongoing global issue despite being curable.

He spent several years engaging with experts and learning about the disease, speaking about it before the United Nations in 2023.

[2][1] Green described the book as "a history of human responses to tuberculosis intertwined with a contemporary story of one person's experience".

[2] The contemporary story is largely that of Henry, a Sierra Leonean boy who shares Green's son's name.