Flora de Barral is the daughter of a successful banker. When he’s tried and convicted of fraud, her prosperous life turns miserable. While on the brink of suicide, she meets an older sea captain and marries him as a means of escape. Her dramatic life is recounted by several characters, but mainly by Marlow, Conrad’s favorite recurring narrator.

Chance , serialized in 1912 and published as a book the following year, is Conrad’s only novel with a female protagonist. It was also his first commercially successful novel, despite its complex narrative structure.