Lord Jim. One Split-Second Decision, a Lifetime Spent Running From It

In one terrified instant, ship's officer Jim abandons a sinking vessel full of passengers he believes are already doomed - and survives to find out they weren't. Stripped of his license and his name in every port that knows the story, he flees east to a remote trading post for one last chance to become the man he always believed he was. Told through the eyes of a narrator piecing the story together secondhand, Lord Jim is Conrad's masterwork on honor, guilt, and the impossible standard of being brave exactly once, at exactly the right moment.
A genuine classic of moral tension that still asks the question no reader can answer easily: what would you have done?