This famous novelist is praised highly for his mastery over English. Can you believe that he did not know a single word of English-until he was nineteen years old?

He was born in Poland. His real name was Teodor Jozef Konrad Walecz Korzeniowksi(a real tongue-twister! isn’t it?). He learned English after becoming a mariner, aboard a merchant ship, in the 1870s.

He published his first novel, Almayer’s Folly, in 1895, when he was 38 years old!