Cel mai iubit dintre pământeni

Cel mai iubit dintre pământeni (English: The Most Beloved of Earthlings) is the last novel by the Romanian author Marin Preda. Written in 1980, it is an intricate fresco of Communist Romania and the horrors of the Stalinist era. The book's overt depiction of political repression at an early stage of Communist rule was allowed to pass through censorship following the change in tone to more nationalist and anti-Soviet attitudes under Nicolae Ceauşescu.

A screen version of the book, directed by Șerban Marinescu and starring Ștefan Iordache in the role of Petrini, was released in 1993.

A long epic, written in first-person, Cel mai iubit... is the life-story confession of a prisoner waiting for his trial. Victor Petrini, a promising intellectual in the 1950s and a lecturer in Philosophy, seduces his best friend's wife, Matilda, who eventually becomes his wife. Nonetheless, and despite the birth of their daughter, the sexual attraction between them is exhausted shortly after their wedding. Victor is arrested by the repressive secret police (the Securitate), wrongly accused of being connected to a terrorist organisation, and sentenced to prison and forced labor - the verdict constitutes a brutal end to all his projects and ideals.