After Crainic took over as Minister of
Propaganda in
KingCarol II's
authoritarian government, he appointed Horia as member of the diplomatic mission to
Rome.[4] According to his own account, Horia shared Crainic's rejection of the
Iron Guard, and, after Carol was ousted by the latter's
National Legionary State government, he was recalled from office.[4] He later left for
Vienna.
Deciding not to return to an increasingly
Soviet Union-dominated Romania, Vintilă Horia lived in Italy (where he became good friends with
Giovanni Papini).
In 1946, following a trial in absentia during the
Post-World War II Romanian war crime trials, Horia was sentenced to life in prison for facilitating the penetration of fascist ideas in Romania, and for making the case for those ideas to be implemented under the leadership of the German embassy in
Bucharest. The sentence against him has never been rescinded.[5] In 1948, Horia moved to
Argentina, where he taught at the
Universidad de Buenos Aires; after March 1953, he lived in
Spain, employed as a researcher in the Italic Studies field.
He won the
Prix Goncourt for his novel Dieu est né en exil (God was born in exile) in
1960; however, following the allegations that he had been a member of the Iron Guard, Horia refused to receive the Prize, but the Goncourt remains attributed to him. According to some, the allegations constituted
slander aimed at Horia by the
communist regime,[6] with the purpose of blackmailing him into issuing positive remarks about the regime.[5] His book notably attracted
Jean-Paul Sartre's criticism.[7]
Other prizes received by Vintilă Horia include Medalla de Oro de Il Conciliatore, Milano (1961); Bravo para los hombres que unem en la verdad, Madrid (1972); and the Dante Alighieri Prize, Florence (1981).
He died in
Collado Villalba, a municipality of
Madrid, and was buried in the Madrid Civil Cemetery.
The centenary of Vintilă Horia was celebrated at the
University of Alcalá (a Spanish university in
Alcalá de Henares) and in several towns in Romania.
Literary works
Novels
Acolo și stelele ard, Ed. Gorjan, București, 1942.
Jurnal de copilărie, Fundația Regală Universitară Carol I, Paris, 1958.
Viitor petrecut, Salamanca, 1976.
Books and PhD Theses consecrated to Vintilă Horia
Books
Sanda Stolojan, Au balcon de l’exil roumain à Paris: avec Cioran, Eugène Ionesco, Mircea Eliade, Vintilă Horia…, Paris,
L'Harmattan, 1999.
Crenguța Gânscă, Vintilă Horia. Al zecelea cerc: eseu despre o trilogie a exilului, Cluj-Napoca, Dacia, 2001.
Marilena Rotaru, Întoarcerea lui Vintilă Horia, Ideea, București, 2002.
Cecilia Latiș, Arhitecturi paralele: Marguerite Yourcenar –Vintilă Horia, Suceava, Editura Universității din Suceava, 2003.
Cecilia Latiș, Polifonii creatoare: paralelă între creația lui Marguerite Yourcenar și a lui Vintilă Horia, Suceava, Editura Universității din Suceava, 2003.
Pompiliu Crăciunescu, Vintilă Horia - Translittérature et Réalité, Editura L’Homme Indivis, Veauche, Franța, 2008.
Georgeta Orian, Vintilă Horia, un scriitor împotriva timpului său, Cluj-Napoca, Limes, 2008.
Pompiliu Crăciunescu, Vintilă Horia - Transliteratură și Realitate, București, Curtea Veche, 2011.
Sonia Elvireanu, Fața întunecată a lui Ianus – Vintilă Horia, Dumitru Țepeneag, Norman Manea, Gabriel Pleșa, Editura Tipo Moldova, Colecția „Academica”, Iași, 2013.
Nicolae Florescu, Vintilă Horia între „ieșirea din a exista și intrarea în a fi”, București, Editura Jurnalul Literar, 2014.
Mihaela Albu and Dan Anghelescu, Eseistica lui Vintilă Horia – deschideri către transdisciplinaritate, Craiova, Aius, 2015.
Monica Nedelcu, La obra literaria de Vintila Horia. El espacio del exilio en cuatro novelas francesas (L’œuvre littéraire de Vintila Horia. L’espace de l’exil dans quatre romans français),
Complutense University of Madrid, Colección Tesis Doctorales, 1989.
Claudia Drăgănoiu, La prose littéraire d’exil : Vintilă Horia, Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu et L. M. Arcade (Proză literară de exil: Vintilă Horia, Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu și L. M. Arcade), Strasbourg, Faculté des Lettres,
University of Strasbourg, 2011.
Manuela Alexe, Représentations de l’espace dans la prose de Vintilă Horia (Reprezentări ale spațiului în proza lui Vintilă Horia), Școala doctorală de studii literare și culturale,
University of Bucharest, 2012.
Renata-Simona Georgescu, L’image de la Roumanie chez Vintilă Horia, Petru Dumitriu et Paul Goma, Facultatea de Litere,
Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, 2013.
Sonia Elvireanu, Fața întunecată a lui Ianus – Vintilă Horia, Dumitru Țepeneag, Norman Manea, Gabriel Pleșa, Facultatea de Istorie și Filologie,
1 Decembrie 1918 University, Alba Iulia, 2013.