The Bourne Identity (novel)

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The Bourne Identity

First edition cover of The Bourne Identity
Author	Robert Ludlum
Original title	The Bourne Identity
Language	English
Series	Bourne Trilogy
Genre	Thriller, Spy novel
Publisher	Richard Marek
Publication date	February 1980
Publication place	United States
Pages	523 pp (First edition)
ISBN	0-399-90070-5
OCLC	5675357
Dewey Decimal	813/.5/4
LC Class	PZ4.L9455 Bo PS3562.U26
Followed by	The Bourne Supremacy

The Bourne Identity is a 1980 spy fiction thriller by Robert Ludlum that tells the story of Jason Bourne, a man with remarkable survival abilities who has retrograde amnesia, and must seek to discover his true identity. In the process, he must also determine why several shadowy groups, a professional assassin, and the CIA want him dead. It is the first novel of the original Bourne Trilogy, which also includes The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum.

Peter Cannon of Publishers Weekly named The Bourne Identity among the best spy novels of all time, after John le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.^[1]

The novel was the basis for the scripts of the 1988 television movie of the same name starring Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn Smith, and the 2002 film of the same name, starring Matt Damon, Franka Potente, and Chris Cooper.