ABOUT
THE BOOK

Set on the eve of America’s entry into World War Two, award-winning novelist Jay Neugeboren’s first new novel in two decades, is built around a fascinating historical figure, Dr. Eduard Bloch, an Austrian doctor who had been physician to Adolf Hitler and his family when Hitler was a boy and young man, and who cared for Hitler’s mother during her illness and death from breast cancer. The historical Bloch was the only Jew for whom Hitler ever personally arranged departure from Europe, and he must now, living in the Bronx, face accusations over the special treatment he received from the Nazi dictator.

1940 focuses on Dr. Bloch’s relationship with Elizabeth Rofman, a medical illustrator at Johns Hopkins Medical School, who has come to New York from Baltimore to visit her father, only to find that he has, mysteriously, disappeared. The story grows more complex when Elizabeth’s son Daniel, a disturbed young adolescent, escapes from the institution in Maryland where his parents have committed him, and makes his way to New York, where he is hidden and protected by his mother… and by Dr. Bloch.