Fang Lizhi was one of the most prominent scientists of the People's Republic of China; he worked on the country's first nuclear program and later became one of the world's leading astrophysicists. His devotion to science and the pursuit of truth led him to question the authority of the Communist regime. That got him in trouble. In 1957, after advocating reforms in the Communist Party, Fang -- just twenty-one years old -- was dismissed from his position, stripped of his Party membership, and sent to be a farm laborer in a remote village. Over the next two decades, through the years of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, he was alternately denounced and rehabilitated, revealing to him the pettiness, absurdity, and horror of the regime's excesses. He returned to more normal work in academia after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, but the cycle soon began again. This time his struggle became a public cause, and his example helped inspire the Tiananmen Square protests. Immediately after the crackdown in June 1989, Fang and his wife sought refuge in the U.S. embassy, where they hid for more than a year before being allowed to leave the country. During that time Fang wrote this memoir The Most Wanted Man in China, which has never been published, until now. His story, told with vivid detail and disarming humor, is a testament to the importance of remaining true to one's principles in an unprincipled time and place.


方勵之是中國最傑出的科學家之一，他參加過中國第一個核子研究計畫，之後成為世界上重要的天體物理學家。他在科學上的貢獻及對真理的追求，使他對共產黨政權的權力提出了質疑，也令他陷入麻煩。1957 年，方勵之 21 歲，由於提倡共產黨改革遭到革職和開除黨籍，並被下放偏鄉勞動。接下來 20 多年，歷經大躍進及文化大革命，他時而受批判，時而恢復名聲，讓他體認到中共政權暴行有多麼委瑣、荒謬與恐怖。1976 年毛澤東辭世後，他回歸學術界從事比較正常的工作，但是這個循環很快又開始重複。這一次，他為了大眾事業受到打壓，他的例子鼓舞了天安門事件的發起。1989 年 6 月鎮壓行動結束後，方勵之和妻子在美國大使館尋得庇護，在獲准離開中國前，藏身在大使館超過一年，同時寫了這本《方勵之自傳》，現在終於問世。他的故事鉅細靡遺，充滿幽默感，表述了在沒有原則的年代和地方，忠於個人原則有多麼重要。