Cel mai iubit dintre pământeni (English: The Earth's Most Beloved Son) is the last novel by the Romanian author Marin Preda.

A film adaptation of the novel, 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 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.

During his several-year-long confinement, at first in the Romanian version of the Gulag, then on a lead mine in the Northern Carpathian Mountains, he is divorced and forsaken by his wife, and hardens his character in order to survive.