Read the passages carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given four alternatives. Born in Prague in 1883 to a Jewish father who excelled in business, Franz Kafka, along with his three sisters, had a comfortable childhood. He earned a doctorate of law degree by the time he was twenty-three and began working for a government agency, where he distinguished himself by publishing reports about worker safety that appeared in professional journals. He retired as Senior Secretary and was awarded a medal of honour for his contribution to the establishment and management of hospitals and rest homes. To his friends, Kafka was warm and charming. He had several girlfriends and two serious relationships, but he never married. Instead, Kafka devoted his life to writing, publishing his first story in 1909. He was well known among the small literary circles of Prague, and he often read his stories out loud to groups of friends, Kafka continued writing until his death at forty-one from tuberculosis in 1924, correcting the final proofs of the story "A Hunger Artist" while on his deathbed. In the world of literature, Kafka holds a coveted distinction. Like William Shakespeare and George Orwell, he is one of the few authors whose name has become an integral part of the vocabulary used to characterize not only other literature but also the workings of the world around him. The term "Kafkaesque" has come to describe a nightmarish atmosphere resulting from pervasive, sinister, impersonal forces, feelings of guilt, fear, and loss of identity, and the sense of evil that permeates the logic of ruling powers. When did Kafka earned his doctorate?