The Delegation (Paperback or Softback)

"A startlingly intellectual choose-your-own-adventure story... told in an energetic voice edged with sharp humor, THE DELEGATION is a stunner." -Aaron Hamburger, author of Hotel Cuba

"Landes is one of the best comic novelists working today, which is to say, one of the best novelists, and I suspect he can do just about anything (except, maybe, be boring)." -Christian TeBordo, author of Discord, a Regression

"Landes is both precise and gonzo. The story's three layers radiate off of one another while each offering their own distinctive voice and vision. All the tensions of the postwar world folded up and condensed in on themselves in delirious (and magnetically readable) complexity." -Brett Biebel, author of 48 Blitz

"Never has there been a "Jews-Like-Dead-Jews book" so acutely, outrageously, unabashedly alive. At once iconic and iconoclastic, hilarious and distressing, THE DELEGATION is an astounding work to rip open, remix, reconfront, and reread." -Sara Lippmann, author of Lech

"Avner Landes achieves a rare trifecta; a gripping and tragic historical novel, a buddy comedy and a metafictional almost talmudic text." -Ben Lindner, host of Beyond the Zero

"A rich, complex novel, blending humor and pathos, that reimagines our ever-present themes of identity and survival in a fresh and compelling way." -Julie Zuckerman, author of The Book of Jeremiah

Moscow, 1943. The Soviet Army has defeated the Nazis at Stalingrad, but continuing to defend the Motherland will require arms, money, and allies around the world. To rally support, Joseph Stalin dispatches a delegation of two Jewish artists, the world-renowned actor (and self-appointed Head Jew of the Soviet Union) Solomon Mikhoels and his Party handler, the middling poet Lieutenant Colonel Itzik Feffer.

From the pyramids of Egypt to the Polo Grounds of New York City, the garrulous Mikhoels entertains crowds with bold and problematic pronouncements, while Feffer reflects on the dimming of his revolutionary spirit and wonders when and how he turned into a timid middle-aged functionary who now spends his days obsessing over the state of his intestinal tract.

In pursuit of their noble cause, Mikhoels and Feffer meet a wealthy lawyer turned artist and his idiot cousin, entreat a tongueless heiress, compare notes with an oversexed Albert Einstein, and share the stage with the great Paul Robeson.

Less than ten years later, they would both be murdered.

Truth and fiction eye each other warily in this true story as told by a fictional author struggling
to pen an epic work of historical fiction.

Avner Landes works as a ghostwriter and editor. His first novel is Meiselman: The Lean Years (Tortoise Books), a finalist for the 2021 Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year. He lives in a suburb of Tel Aviv with his wife and two children.