Features » Literature   A writer in the Cold War  Richard Wagner
pleads for a fresh look at the novels of right-wing Romanian
writer Vintila Horia, who died in 1992 in literary disgrace.  In
December 2006 a group of Romanian intellectuals submitted a
petition to the Culture Ministry in Bucharest requesting the
rehabilitation of the writer Vintila Horia. Among the
signatories of the petition were poet Ana Blandiana, the Paris-
based writer and dissident Paul Goma, literary critic and editor
Monica Lovinescu, and Ion Caramitru, an actor and cultural
policy maker.  Who is Vintila Horia? In 1960 the Prix Goncourt
jury selected him to receive the Prize for "God Is Born in
Exile," his novel about Ovid (published well before Christoph
Ransmayr's "The Last World" - review). Horia's book was
translated into 14 languages, including German, and ultimately
appeared in Germany as a Goldmann paperback. But the Prix
Goncourt was never actually awarded to Horia. Shortly after the
jury's selection was announced, the newspaper