He wrote plays, scripts for motion pictures, and published (with co-authors Eduard Uspensky, Grigory Gorin, and Arkady Arkanov) two books of short stories.
His works were published by Literaturnaya Gazeta, Yunost', Novi Mir and other prestigious literary journals in Moscow.
In 1967, Felix Kamov, Arkadiy Khait, and Alexander Kurlandsky began writing scripts for the animated series Nu, pogodi!, directed by Vyacheslav Kotyonochkin of the Soyuzmultfilm studio.
In the late 1960s Kandel started writing prose, which was never published in the Soviet Union, since it was not politically correct enough for the times.
Several Jewish organizations in Europe and in the US took a particular interest in the Kandel family and started a vigorous campaign for their release.
His work was published in the leading Russian-language journals in the West, such as “Continent” (Paris), “Grani” (Munich), and “22” (Tel Aviv).
The following novels by him were published in the West and in Russia since 1991 (also indicates the languages of translation): Since 1987 Kandel initiated an ambitious project of writing a popular history of the Jews that lived on the territories comprising the Russian Empire.
The resulting volumes titled, Books of Times and Events, appeared over the next 20 years in Russian and were well received by the public and the critics.
During the same period Kandel also published a popular history book on the Jewish emigration to Israel in the last 200 years, The Land Under our Feet.