The Never-Ending Sacrifice (Cardassian novel)

The Never-Ending Sacrifice is a piece of Cardassian literature, of the repetitive epic genre.

It features seven generations of a Cardassian family whose members whose stories involve serving the Cardassian Union until they age and die. The characters face a choice between serving their own needs and those of future generations and the choice of comfort in their own lives or the life of the state and its mission. 

Elim Garak thought The Never-Ending Sacrifice was the finest Cardassian novel ever written and the greatest form of the repetitive epic. 

Garak first read The Never-Ending Sacrifice at some point prior to his return from the Bamarren Institute for State Intelligence and, upon his return home, he insisted Mila and Tolan Garak read it. Garak once told Mila that her devotion to Enabran Tain was her own "never-ending sacrifice". 

Iliana Ghemor thought The Never-Ending Sacrifice was a "painfully wretched" novel. A copy of the novel was in her quarters in the Obsidian Order headquarters. Ghemor had a change of heart about the The Never-Ending Sacrifice after she joined the Order, planning to reread her favorite portions of it before she had the surgery for her mission on Bajor. 

In 2370, Garak introduced Julian Bashir to the novel, although Bashir found it somewhat dull, citing the similar stories of all the members of the family. Garak brushed off Bashir's criticisms of the novel, calling him "a prisoner of Federation dogma and human prejudice".