The Bourne Ultimatum

This is a brand new Jason Bourne novel – latest in the bestselling series. Readers were first introduced to Jason Bourne’s nemesis Leonid Arkadin, a brilliant Russian assassin and fearless international mercenary, in The Bourne Sanction. His girlfriend was killed during a fight for which an enraged Arkadin blames Bourne. In The Bourne Deception, Arkadin hunted Bourne to take revenge and kill him. Bourne, in a fight for his life, learned that Arkadin’s skills mirror Jason’s because he received the same original CIA Treadstone training. Now, in The Bourne Objective, Jason will turn the tables and target Arkadin. Hunter will become hunted. But revenge can cause great psychological devastation. Has this become too personal for Bourne? Will this hunt be Bourne’s downfall?

Such was the battle that raged between Cousin K and me: good done badly; evil done well.” And such is the twisted logic of good and bad, right and wrong, knitted into this novella by one of the most powerful voices to emerge from North Africa in our time. With his father brutally killed as a traitor during a national liberation war and his older brother an army officer far away, the young narrator lives reclusively with his mother, who scorns him. He turns to his young cousin for affection, only to be mocked and humiliated so deeply that his love becomes hopelessly entangled with hatred.

Fate places a young woman in the narrator’s path when he rescues her from a violent attack, and the reawakening of his confused passions proceeds toward terrible vengeance. In this nameless narrator’s tormented reflections, played out against the backdrop of an indifferent world, Yasmina Khadra plumbs the mysteries of the crippled heart’s desires.