Virgil Gheorgiu, Cimetière de Passy, 16th arrondissement

Virgil Gheorghiu (1916–92) was a Rumanian writer whose most important novel was The Twenty-Fifth Hour (1949; trans. 1950), which was adapted into a film in 1967 by Henri Verneuil. It is a denunciation of totalitarian regimes and of the impersonalization of society, and the French Preface was written by Gabriel Marcel.

In 1952 Gheorghiu was vigorously accused of anti-Semitism by the press, the accusations dating from when he was a war correspondent. He refused to deny the charges, causing Marcel to demand that the publisher remove his Preface from future editions of the novel.