Soon after, the world was plunged into a crisis that thrust the I.M.F. onto center stage and renewed its role as a financial monitor and firefighter.

Mr. Ghosh brought out a second edition last month with a new publisher, Greenleaf Book Group Press, in time for the annual meetings of the I.M.F. and the World Bank here, where he sold and signed scores of copies.

The book’s title refers to the street here that separates the two institutions.

Its plot centers on two economists: a cynical bureaucrat, Celine O’Rourke, and a morally conflicted terrorist, Sophia Gemaye, who infiltrates an I.M.F.-like institution to sabotage currency markets and draw attention to the plight of her homeland, an unnamed, oil-rich developing country.

The novel takes a skeptical view of economists, their lingo and their values. One character, a love interest of Sophia, is described as “slipping effortlessly into the usual economists’ euphemisms  from ‘fiscal retrenchment’ to ‘labor market flexibility’  that disguise, even from the speaker, the unpleasantness of slashing budgets and throwing people out of work.”

Another character admits: “We try to do good, and sometimes we end up doing harm. We’re the surgeon whose patient dies in the operating theater. Or worse, we don’t even know if we did harm or whether things would’ve turned out even more disastrous without us.”

Yet Mr. Ghosh says he thinks the image of the I.M.F. as a heartless institution that cracks down on financially stricken nations is outdated. “The I.M.F. has been rehabilitating its reputation in emerging market countries, especially Asia, since the Asian crisis by acknowledging where we were wrong  but also, I think, drawing lessons about what we did right,” he said.