Like many people I came to this book through the movies based on Robert Ludlum's Bourne novels. I read THE JANSON DIRECTIVE several years ago (blew through it on a 30-hour train ride between Kolkata and Chennai), and though it was entertaining enough to pass the time with, I felt like it was essentially literary packing foam. I wasn't looking for Les Miserables, mind you, but Ludlum's characters are pretty mechanical, operating basically to show off a hidden world of espionage, conspiracy, and cool gadgets. There's nothing essentially wrong with this kind of novel, but I prefer character-driven fiction, where I can see personalities of some complexity and depth grapple with challenges and come out changed somehow. As far as I can tell, Ludlum didn't write this kind of novel often. But THE BOURNE IDENTITY is an attempt at this kind of novel. The main character, so-called "Jason Bourne," is not struggling against assassins and CIA operatives for some political agenda or even merely to save his own life. He is trying to understand himself, to learn who he is. As one character states (as an almost shameless declaration of the "moral of the story"), "In a way, [Bourne is] a functioning microcosm of us all. I mean, we're all trying to find out who the hell we are, aren't we?" Such internal conflict, however, is handled quite clumsily in Ludlum's hands, which seem unaccustomed to dealing with emotional subtleties. Credit should go to the makers of the Bourne movies (Matt Damon and the rest of the cast prominent among them) for breathing life and depth into these characters. I was a bit disappointed at how much of the mysteries surrounding Bourne's character are resolved for the reader not through Bourne himself learning the truth, but through a significant number of scenes where Bourne's adversaries discuss the details of his past life amongst themselves. For me this sucked the momentum out of the winding up scenes, and left me feeling like I'd missed the climax. One last thing: those picking up THE BOURNE IDENTITY having seen the movies should be aware that the novel was published in 1980. While many of the basic premises remain the same, this is not exactly the same story you saw on screen. This is not at all a bad thing, but some people get really upset when they're expecting a perfect translation between literature and film or vice versa.