The Kafka Grind

From Insurance Clerk to Literary Genius

A series of false starts, dead ends, and soul-crushing day jobs marked Franz Kafka’s early adulthood. After our exploration of “Description of a Struggle,” let’s explore the period from 1906 to 1908.

In June 1906, at 23, Franz Kafka obtained his doctorate in jurisprudence from Charles University in Prague. As with many fresh law graduates, he stood at a crossroads—what path should his life and career take now?

For a while, Kafka entertained dreams of fleeing Prague and his overbearing father. He imagined wandering through “exotic places” such as Madrid—his uncle, Alfred Löwy, who was linked to the Rothschilds and Péreires, and held a prestigious position at a Spanish railway company, might be persuaded to help him—and even contemplated travelling to America—two of his paternal cousins had ventured there and achieved a modicum of success—and possibly (why not?) becoming an Indian—a concept he explored in an experimental short story he wrote at the time, which he later published under the…