DNF.

I've decided to return and give a less sarcastic remark about this story.

Typically I don't rate DNFs. I don't feel like it's fair. And perhaps it is unfair still and things might have improved. But I found this book hit a heavy place for me.
In the time I read there were only two woman characters. The first was a prostitute who was only given enough screen time for us to see what she was in a vivid light.
The second was the love interest. A woman who was kidnapped from a hotel simply as use as camouflage. And when the camouflage attempt failed, she was not released, but dragged along. And when she fought she was called named by the AUTHOR (authorial voice, not Bourne's voice) slapped by the MC, and taken by force from any hope of safety.
When I finally gave up on it, was when her second attempt at escape was met with Bourne "teaching her a lesson" by beating her and climbing on top of her with a gun to her face.
Once again, the narrative doesn't hint at any morality in this. Bourne is shown as being professional and intelligent. Not cruel. Not a sociopath. Just efficient.
Once again, just a moment of contemplation makes it clear that Bourne didn't actually NEED her.
The thought that they would, at some point, become a couple was downright sickening to me.
I don't think I need to explain WHY this bothers me. Any woman out there can probably at least name one friend who's suffered rape or abuse, if they haven't experienced that on their own. To have behavior like that put in the context of anything other than evil is not acceptable.
Perhaps this is personal bias. Perhaps it's overreaction. Maybe it really does get better. But I am not going to keep reading a book that makes me sick to the stomach when I have a lot of better books to read. And I cannot in good conscious recommend this to anyone else.
Watch the movie instead. That's a Bourne I can be excited about.

That was the winter of 2011. It had been harsh, cloudy and too foggy. I lived on the outskirts of my city then for few months and apart from the luxurious noon sunlight and biting cold, there wasn't much happening around. I ran to my sacred haven. There I met Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne. The winter will be always remembered fondly!

I liked everything about this book. Since I opened it without much knowledge (yup, I was too ignorant then) so it turned out to be colorful firecrackers in the small box.

Since the very opening on the island it piques readers' interest. The dramatic scenes, Bourne's unexplained money and combat skills he has no knowledge of, come in handy. On the pavements of Paris and on the roads of the USA the chameleon roams with equal gait and skills. The shadows of a powerful controlling assassin, Carlos, are intriguing too. I found it so marvelous I can go in each detail and tell how it's perfectly carved hologram of Robert Ludlum's writing. ( The only complaint  was  the names seemed copied after other legendary spy, James Bond. JB. Well, they both share many characteristics of great spy so similarities are welcome. And coming to movies, Bourne series is said to be "loosely based on novels" don't count. The books are far supreme by any comparison.
I read three of them in succession often finding myself stark awake till early mornings. The later books of series are written by another author and don't have the same speed, grip, thrill and intricate plotting. I read them too because Jason Bourne had made a strong impact in very first rendezvous. When I heard Ludlum is on Dan Brown's admiration list, I wasn't amazed. That fits just perfect!

BTW, just checking reviews of my GR friends. Happy to see they all gave it thumbs up with 4+star!

First of all let me say...the recent movie with Matt Damon, I hated it. They butchered the story. I understand shortening for time (as in The Lord of the Rings) I understand combining characters...but why take a book's title then completely rewrite the story?

I like this book and its sequels. I hate the movie and its sequels.

Please try reading the books and finding out what the plot actually is. The book is well plotted, thought out, with complex characters. I believe you'll like it.

A man wakes up with amnesia...not a unique plot even then...and has to put together who he is and what's going on from few clues. This can be difficult in the best of times. If people are trying to kill you that can sometimes add to the...stress.

Microfilm, competing assassins, double and triple identities and of course a love story. As noted, this is a great read and it's much better than the movie by the same name in my opinion. (Although back in 1988 there was a miniseries staring Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn Smith that stayed very close to the book. The special effects are dated and so on, but it's better story-wise if you care to look it up.)

If all you know about the The Bourne Identity is the Matt Damon movie you don't know the story. Really, do yourself a favor and read the novel.

I don't remember how this ended because I had to buy myself a Jack-and-Coke to get through the last chapter. Ludlum belongs in a very small, elite group of authors who don't know what words mean. To illustrate this, here are some passages from the book followed by the first image that came to mind when I read them:


"'If I scream, Monsieur?' The powdered mask was cracked with lines of venom now, the bright red lipstick defining the snarl of an aging, cornered rodent."






"Himself. The chameleon. The charade had worked...He had done such things before, experienced the feeling of a similar accomplishment before. He was a man running through an unfamiliar jungle, yet somehow instinctively knowing his way, sure of where the traps were and how to avoid them. The chameleon was an expert."









Aaaand this last one was basically my face the whole time I was reading this:

It doesn't seem quite right that the first Bourne movie was released over 20 years ago.
What's even more surprising is that it's taken that long to finally read the book.

We all know the basic premise, a man is found floating in the sea with no memory. The only clue is a microchip implanted beneath his skin.

What also really surprised me was how different the book really is when compared to the movie, though on reflection with the novel being written during the height of the Cold War - I guess that was to be expected.

I found the story to be highly entertaining, though I did find it to drag slightly in the middle.
It was certainly much more brutal than the screen adaptation, though I liked the intensity of the protagonist Bourne trying to discover his identity whilst constantly having people trying to kill him.

I'm definitely curious to see how the other two in Ludum's trilogy compare.

The Bourne Identity (Jason Bourne, #1), Robert Ludlum

Robert Ludlum (May 25, 1927, New York, - March 12, 2001, Naples, Florida) was an American author of 27 thriller novels, best known as the creator of Jason Bourne from the original The Bourne Trilogy series.

Jason Bourne has no past, and maybe has no future. His memory is empty. He only knows this: when he was thrown out of the Mediterranean, his body was full of bullets. There are a few clues as well. A microfilm frame has been surgically implanted under her pelvis, and there is evidence that plastic surgery has also changed her face. He says strange things in his delirium, there are J.B. passwords and a number on the film negative, which refers to a bank account in Switzerland, and a fortune of four million dollars, named Jason Bourne, and ...

تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز دهم ماه فوریه سال2022میلادی

عنوان: هویت بورن؛ نویسنده: رابرت لادلوم؛ مترجم: هادی امینی؛ تهران، رایا کتاب، سال1400؛ در541ص؛ شابک9786229847312؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م

کتاب «هویت بورن» با روایت از یک کرجی در بین امواج خشمگین و سیاه دریا آغاز می‌شود؛ مردی روی یک کشتی ایستاده و کسی به او شلیک می‌کند؛ او «جیسون بورن» است؛ جاسوسی موفق و حرفه‌ای، که قرار است تا چند ساعت آینده اتفاق بدی برایش بیفتد؛ «جیسون بورن» کم‌کم به سراغ گذشته‌اش می‌رود، اما در این مسیر نیز رویدادهای شومی در انتظارش هستند؛ او باید مبارزه کند؛ او بگذشته ای ندارد، شاید آینده ای هم نداشته باشد؛ حافظه اش خالی شده؛ تنها این را میداند: او را که از دریای مدیترانه بیرون انداختند، بدنش پر از گلوله بود؛ چند سرنخ هم وجود دارد؛ یک فریم از یک میکروفیلم که با جراحی در زیر گوشت لگن او کاشته شده، و شواهدی مبنی بر اینکه جراحی پلاستیک نیز چهره اش را تغییر داده است؛ چیزهای عجیبی در هذیان خود میگوید، کلمات رمزی، حروف «جی.بی»، و یک عدد نیز روی نگاتیو فیلم وجود دارد، که به یک حساب بانکی در «سوئیس»، و ثروتی بالغ بر چهار میلیون دلار، به نام «جیسون بورن» اشاره میکند، و ...؛

نقل از کتاب «هویت بورن»: (موج غلتان هیولاواری برخاست؛ او روی تاج موج بود و کف و تاریکی او را احاطه کرده بودند؛ هیچ چیز؛ برگرد! برگرد! اتفاق افتاد؛ انفجار مهیبی بود، او می‌توانست صدای آن را از بین امواج کوبنده و باد بشنود، منظره و صدایی که به نحوی برایش دریچه‌ای به سوی آرامش بود، آسمان با تاجی آتشین روشن شد و از میان این تاج، اشیایی با هر شکل و اندازه از دل روشنایی به سمت تاریکیِ بیرون پرتاب شد؛ او پیروز شده بود؛ هر چیزی که بود، پیروز شده بود؛ ناگهان دوباره به سمت پایین رفت؛ دوباره درون پرتگاهی شد؛ می‌توانست هجوم آب‌های مواج و خروشان روی شانه‌هایش را حس کند که گرمای روی شقیقه‌اش را خنک می‌کرد، سرمای درون شکمش و پاهایش را هم گرم می‌کرد؛ سینه‌اش؛ سینه‌اش درد می‌کرد! او ضربه خورده بود؛ ضربه‌ای کوبنده، ضربه‌ای ناگهانی و تحمل‌ناپذیر. دوباره اتفاق افتاد! ولم کنید؛ بذارید آروم بگیرم؛ او دوباره چنگ انداخت و دوباره دست و پا زد...؛ تا اینکه حس کرد؛ چیز کلفت و چربی که تنها با حرکات دریا تکان می‌خورد؛ نمی‌دانست چه چیزی است، ولی آنجا بود و می‌توانست آن را حس کند و می‌توانست آن را بگیرد؛ بگیرش! می‌بردت به سمت آرام��؛ به سکوت تاریکی...؛ و آرامش؛ اولین پرتوهای خورشید صبحگاهی آسمان مه‌گرفته شرق را شکافتند، و به آب‌های آرام مدیترانه تابیدند؛ ناخدای کشتی ماهیگیری کوچک، با چشمان قرمز و دستانی پر از آثار سوختگی طناب روی دیواره پشتی کشتی نشسته، و با لذت از منظره دریای آرام، یک نخ گولواز می‌کشید؛ نگاه کوتاهی به اتاقک هدایت بدون دیوار انداخت؛ برادر کوچک‌ترش داشت گاز می‌داد، تا زمان کوتاه‌تری در راه باشند، و تنها ملوان کشتی هم چند قدم آن‌طرف‌تر مشغول بررسی تور بود؛ آن‌ها به چیزی می‌خندیدند، و این خوب بود؛ چون دیشب چیز خنده‌داری نداشت؛ توفان از کجا آمده بود؟ گزارش هواشناسی مارسی چیزی نشان نداده بود؛ در این صورت او در پناهگاه ساحلی می‌ماند)؛ پایان نقل

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 03/12/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Jason Bourne’s amnesia is identical in so many ways to my own.

For one thing, I’ve forgotten the salient points of most of the Ludlum oeuvre, though I filled my idle commuting and travelling moments with most of them, between 1977 and 1984.

And why then can I nevertheless remember highlights of the Dickens, Shakespeare and Bronte works I read more than 10 years earlier?

Duh. Great writers don’t pull their punches!

You always remember a real Wallop.

Ludlum, on the other hand, thrives on shadow boxing. And filling his books with shadow characters.

You know, when a friend and I attended the opening night of the Matt Damon flick they made of this book, the stereotypically leftist intellectual couple in front of us INSTINCTIVELY connected the dots in Ludlum’s shadow dance.

Guess you’ve gotta be a TV fan. I couldn’t do that.

TV fans catch every one of those outré aperçus that the spotless onscreen hero mumbles in a breathless undertone.

Unlike me, they’re au fait.

I’m quite the opposite: my meds shroud my brain in a pea soup fog.

So I SLEEP at night - rather than staying awake wondering what my boss REALLY meant when muttering at me.

So there’s a benefit there.

Anyway, as one who misses the hidden connections between Jason’s incoherent mumblings and the latest covert weaponry - and thank heaven I do! - Ludlum is at least as good as warm milk to put me to sleep.

The best thing Ludlum and other writers of his ilk have done for me is to tell me there’s more substantially satisfying writing out there than mindless paranoiacs like him can produce.

And again, thank heaven, Mr Bourne, that the closest I come to paranoid amnesia in my oh-so-pedestrian days is in my many dumb seniors’ moments!

I am still looking for well-written thrillers, and I think I have found one. Robert undoubtedly possesses writing skills that elevate him above the pack, and for the most part he delivers an enjoyable, at times even immersive, experience.

In the opening chapters, Robert demonstrates that he is able to guide the reader's perception of the characters masterfully. In the first chapter, the protagonist of the novel is being nursed to life by a local doctor. Gradually, the main character is shown to regain consciousness, and we learn that he has lost his memory. We take part in his struggle to explore his world, and I found the experience of reading the chapter strangely unreal, just as it might be when you actually do suffer from amnesia.

It is hard to prove but I think Robert may have created this atmosphere deliberately. We experience the protagonist's struggle through his eyes (3rd person point of view) and take his part in conversations with the doctor. In these conversations, Robert fails to establish any framework, we do not hear a lot about the location in which the characters find themselves, or about the circumstances that got the protagonist into the doctor's care in the first place. We hear a little bit, but not a lot. And because we do not have a tangible framework which would aid our orientation, we find ourselves in the same position as the protagonist. We hang on the physician's every word, we try to figure out what happened, we are struggling to get a grip. But as nothing is said in context, everything remains unreal.

Indeed, the protagonist does not even have a name. He is being referred to throughout as "the man", "the patient", or "the man with no memory". Robert gradually lifts this anonimity in the second chapter, in which the designations gradually give way to the more personal "he", and finally, in chapter three, to "Bourne", the name Robert uses during the majority of the novel.

So this was the good stuff. I think Robert has clearly shown in these opening chapters that he commands writing skills that set him apart from most other thriller writers. After these skillfully crafted opening chapters, the writing remains fluent, but becomes more mainstream. Dialogue sequences with his girlfriend, to be introduced at a later stage, are meant to show the harrowing pain he goes through in recovering his memory, but are repetitive and become quickly tedious. Still, overall, an enjoyable read.

Just to pick out one thing, though, I think Robert likes playing with language and find turns of phrases that are uncommon, that would set his style apart from the pack. Sometimes this works, but sometimes he comes up with things that just sound odd. Let me share some of these with you, and see whether you agree:

n  ... scraps of relevantly irrelevant information. Gossip. (p224)
... she gave them in turn to the slender salesgirl, who walked cadaverously out of the office... (p233)
Congressman Efrem Walters ... was not to be dismissed with facile circulocution that dealt with the esoterica of clandestine manipulations. (p251)n

Now, that last one I have no idea what he is on about. But this next one is an excellent example of an evocative metaphor, and represents what I think Robert wished to achieve:

n  His bearing was umistakably military, imposing his body on the surrounding space, entering it by breaking it, invisible walls collapsing as he moved. (p367)n

And finally, can I have a moan, please. It's the usual thing I always get hung up about. Thrillers must work. If a writer chooses to give details about topography, town maps, or language, then these details must be right.

When Robert's characters speak German, they speak the sort of invented language that an American author may think is idiomatic, but unfortunately only exists in his imagination. For some reason, Robert is particularly inept when it comes to German - his French is much better, although it suffers from the same general malaise - no pun.

When Robert's characters move around, they frequently die an undignified death by driving their cars into oncoming traffic or a lake. Or at least that is what they would do if they took the twists and turns identified in detail in the plot. You cannot turn left into the rue de Rivoli from where the characters were standing on page 292; you'd end up stuck in the Altstadt in Zurich if you tried to drive the routes they "drove", and you cannot kill somebody on the General-Guisan-Quai without attracting so much public attention that you might as well deliver yourself to jail immediately.

Well. Robert wrote the novel 30 years ago, and I do not know what Zurich or Paris looked like at the time. But German and French haven't changed completely during that time... But maybe I am just a git and should shut up. Which I will now do. As I said, I think Robert is a gifted writer and he delivered a good novel.

This novel was published in 1980, and the primary antagonist (who just happens to be a real life person) was left out of the 2002 film, no doubt because he was apprehended and, to some extent, demystified, in the 1990s. The fact that this person is central to the plot of the novel, but does not appear in the film, inevitably drives a contextual wedge between the two mediums, even though the central amnesia theme remains the same. There is also a 1988 TV-film, which I haven’t seen.

All in all, it’s a very good novel. Robert Ludlum had a unique voice, and The Bourne Identity is the grand-daddy of the modern espionage story, with its high tech (for the time) thrills and spills. If I had any complaints about the novel it would probably have something to do with the relationship between Jason Bourne and Marie St Jacques (she is a French-Canadian here, who holds a doctorate in economics). Stockholm syndrome to the max, which in itself isn’t anything new, but I didn’t find the progression entirely convincing.

If you’re looking for an espionage thriller with more than a little intrigue and a hefty dose of high octane action, this is one of the best places to start.

Very exciting premise but – and don’t kill me for this – overrated. Unnecessarily made complicated. The memory loss angle could be handled better; it makes the narrative loopy and the back story too repetitive and stretched. A bit scattergun and confusing for my taste. The film was handled better.

This book was my introduction to spy novels and its still the best I've read in that area. Incredibly detailed and full of suspense. My favorite spy and one of my favorite villains rolled in to one in to exhilarating package with fast pace action.If you like an authentic touch in what you read you'll love this! Must note that the movie is completely different from the book. In my opinion the book is a much better experience.

I tried, I really did; I kept reading even as my impatience for this book increased. I got 3/4 of the way through and I finally couldn't take it anymore (that's saying a lot, given that this book is well over 500 pages). My gripe list:

1. It's so long. For no good reason. The plot isn't that complicated. The characters aren't that interesting. The writing isn't that gripping (original, lyrical, stark, poetic, etc). Nothing justifies the length of this book.

2. Nothing justifies the enduring relationship between Jason Bourne and Marie. Eventually Marie is forced to stick it out with Jason because she's implicated as his partner in crime, but until that point, there's no good reason for her to stay with him: despite their (and the narrator's) frequent assertions that they love each other deeply, there's nothing about their actions or interactions that would suggest they actually care about each other one way or the other, and there's nothing to suggest that Marie is such a good person that she'd give up her entire life to try to help a dangerous man of questionable origins who violently kidnapped her just because it's "the right thing to do." It's like Stockholm Syndrome, except that Bourne tries to get rid of her! He insists repeatedly that he's dangerous and she should leave him because to stay with him is to ruin her life. Plus, Stockholm Syndrome would require emotional and psychological complexity on the part of Marie, which we know she's lacking (see gripe (3)).

3. In the early stages of the novel, Marie is brutally gang raped. Pretty traumatic, right? Nope. A few pages later she doesn't seem to care, it's not really addressed again, and she easily falls into a (spectacular, apparently) sexual relationship with Bourne. No evidence of trauma! No flashbacks! And it's not like she's so emotionally damaged that she's buried it because she doesn't want to deal with it, or that she has amnesia surrounding the event -- nope, she acknowledges it happened but just doesn't care. She doesn't forget -- the novel forgets, because her brutal gang rape is not an emotionally charged event but rather just a plot device to get Marie and Bourne together again. So that they can have life alteringly spectacular sex and profess to love each other. (See gripe (2)).

3. Dialogue is atrocious. I don't care whether it's so stilted that it's unrealistic. Sometimes I really like stilted dialogue -- if I wanted authentic dialogue, I'd have a conversation with a real person instead of reading a book. Rather, my objection is that conversations can be pages long without any evidence of who said what. Apparently a well-placed "Bourne said" would detract from the flow? Readers can't even assume that the person asking the questions is Bourne -- you know, the guy with amnesia, who you might think would be the one asking questions -- because (a) Bourne has some sort of superhuman ability to accurately guess what other people know and what's going on and (b) there are no stylistic differences between characters' speech. So why bother with dialogue at all? Its sole purpose here is to explicate for the reader. Exactly like explicative narration. The only difference is the presence of quote marks.

4. This book is littered with gems like this one: "The old man nodded the way old men do when repeating words that have stunned them to the point of disbelief." Is this supposed to be something that old men do on a regular basis? Is this a normal reaction we are supposed to recognize as familiar? I am fairly confident it is supposed to sound profound, but it's just profoundly stupid.

5. The action sequences are fairly engaging. Which just makes it sad, really, that there are so few action sequences compared to the fantastically dull explicative non-action sequences.

6. Up until Bourne leaves the alcoholic doctor, this is a tight, interesting little mystery. It really is unfortunate that the rest of it is so... not tight, not interesting, and not mysterious.