Until the Victim Becomes our Own

Until the Victim Becomes our Own is a 2025 composite novel by the Greek author Dimitris Lyacos, conceived as the zeroth book, or prequel, of his Poena Damni trilogy. It explores violence as a constant element in the formation of human societies, tracing Western civilization from its Judeo-Christian foundations through industrialization and the growth of institutional coercion to a final order imposed by cybernetic control. The narrative moves through lettered chapters told by alternating narrators in a cinematic montage style, progressing from violence among animals through biblical murder, imprisonment and slaughter to psychiatric rehabilitation under cybernetic order, and it closes with a supplementary section of sources from the sciences and humanities that reflects on the book's own act of compiling them. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/