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 suffers from retrograde amnesia, and must seek to discover his true identity. In the process, he must also reason out why several shadowy groups, a professional assassin, and the CIA want him dead. The story takes readers on an action-packed journey into a world of deceptions and conspiracies, offering a psychological portrait of Bourne, and giving them the chance to experience from his point of view the life-or-death decisions he makes as he seeks to piece together the dangerous puzzle of his missing past. It is the first novel of the original Bourne Trilogy, which also includes The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum.