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 familiy 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.

1940 is a fiercely original novel that travels to dark places where it exposes us to people who, like ourselves, inhabit a troubled world that is very much in transition.

"Jay Neugeboren traverses the Hitlerian tightrope with all the skill and formal daring that have made him one of our most honored writers of literary fiction and masterful nonfiction. This new book is, at once, a beautifully realized work of imagined history, a rich and varied character study and a subtly layered novel of ideas, all wrapped in a propulsively readable story. Neugeboren is marvelous. Part of the power of this intelligently and finely wrought novel is that... thoughts and questions arise unforced from the story, as though from life itself." - Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times

"Intelligent and absorbing . . . subtle and affecting." -Tova Reich, Washington Post

"The wisdom of Neugeboren's novel comes from its recognition that final solutions evade without answering questions. Bloch rejects facile attempts to explain Hitler and subdue Daniel. The advice he quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke, "to have patience with everything unresolved and to try to love the questions themselves," is as valuable in 2008 as it is in 1940." -Steven G. Kellman, The Huffington Post

"Jay Neugeboren's 1940 is a taut, nuanced, beautifully written novel that captures an anxious and uncertain time in ways that a straight rendering of facts and dates could never achieve. Neugeboren casts a spell on the first page of his novel that never goes away. This memorable work of historical fiction is to be contemplated as well as savored."
-Commonweal

"This tautly constructed, utterly readable book raises questions the reader must answer. Highly recommended."
-Library Journal, Starred Review

"Jay Neugeboren has performed an astounding feat of literary alchemy, effortlessly blending science, history, religion, art, biography and psychiatry into a haunting tale that is at once a love story and a suspense novel."
-Hadassah Magazine

"Neugeboren's first novel in 20 years presents a fictional account of an obscure historical figure in this intelligent, densely layered novel. Neugeboren's characters are nuanced and complex, especially the strong-willed Elisabeth... the great characters and the author's thoughtful examination of good and evil pack a cerebral punch."
-Publishers Weekly

"A compelling read on many levels, offering personal reflection, historical speculation, and mystery."
-Kirkus Reviews

"There is plenty of imagination exercised in 1940. This strange story, encompassing several mysteries and theological reflection, has a curious power and pull." -Gerald Sorin, Haaretz

"1940 is simultaneously a psychological thriller and a love story, and am impressive blending of research and the imagination. Neugeboren's novel is a page turner, and better yet, a chance to meet, up close and personal, a largely unknown figure: Hitler's childhood physician, Dr. Eduard Bloch." -Sanford Pinsker, JBooks.com

"Neugeboren's 1940 is clever in all the right ways and in none of the wrong ways - intricate, impeccably researched, but never pretentious, didactic, or self-indulgent. It is also never dull; though brimming with ideas, many of them disquieting, it is a highly engrossing read. We read, and re-read, 1940, though, not for these gifts, welcome as they are, but for its engagement with some of the deepest issues of our time and, in its grappling with the enigmas of the human soul, of all time. Neugeboren has started with the impropable and produced something indelible."
-Joseph Triebwasser, Midstream

"History, medicine, Nazi racial theory, and some of the most fascinating and well-drawn characters - whether fictional or real - to be found in recent literature: it is all here in Jay Neugeboren's beautifully crafted novel." -Sherwin B. Nuland

"Set in New York on the eve of World War Two, 1940 is a compassionate and beautifully nuanced tale of love and salvation in the darkest of times. Jay Neugeboren has seamlessly woven history, theology, romance, science, and a troubled family into a exquisite novel of mystery and exploration of the human heart. It is also a page-turner, a thrilling read." –Binnie Kirshenbaum

"A strange, haunting and original work, a novel of ideas, part-romance, part-comedy, historical fiction of a high order, it is above all audacious and deliciously rewarding. Though there are echoes of I.B. Singer and Cynthia Ozick in the emigre situation, the handling of young Hitler is like nothing I've ever read. Doctor Bloch is an amazing character, the passages told in his voice are uncanny, and his confrontation scene with Doctor Landau made my hair stand on end." -Phillip Lopate

"Once again, Jay Neugeboren has proven himself one of today's master storytellers. 1940, with its cast of eccentric characters and offbeat chain of events, offers a distinctly original and provocative take on a crucial moment in history." -Lynne Sharon Schwartz

"A poignant tale of displacement in a time of displacement, where our hero is Hitler's former physician hiding in the Bronx and our heroine a woman with her own perverse beauty and perverse will. 1940 is a time bomb that explodes in our skulls with a fierce, luxurious power and pull." -Jerome Charyn

“A strange and intriguing contribution to the body of work that seeks to cast light on the dark phenomenon of Naziism.” -Anita Desai