The Bird That Drinks Tears Wins French Literary Prize as the Korean Fantasy Epic Goes Global

Published: September 29, 2026

More than two decades after its original publication in South Korea, Lee Young-do’s The Bird That Drinks Tears has won a literary prize in France. The first French-language volume, L’Oiseau qui boit des larmes, Tome 1: Le Cœur des nagas, received the 2026 Prix du livre Cultissime at the Cultissime Festival in Angers.

The festival’s official winners page names Lee’s novel as this year’s book-prize winner. This is a particularly interesting moment for fantasy readers outside Korea: the first volume also reached English-language shelves this summer as The Heart of the Nhaga, translated by Anton Hur. A series that has long been a major name in Korean fantasy is finding a wider readership in several languages at once.

Which French prize did The Bird That Drinks Tears win?

The award is the Prix du livre Cultissime 2026, given to a work of fiction judged to have the potential to endure and become a reference point for readers. According to the Cultissime prize rules, voting is divided equally between the general public and book and media professionals. The award went to the first French volume, published by Le Rayon Imaginaire, a Hachette imprint, in October 2025.

It is easy to confuse this win with another French award that made headlines earlier in 2026. Lee’s novel was shortlisted for the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire in the foreign novel category, but it did not win that prize. The May result reported by The Korea Times named Alex Landragin’s Crossings as its winner. The new Cultissime result is a separate honor.

What is The Bird That Drinks Tears about?

First published in South Korea in 2003, The Bird That Drinks Tears is a four-volume epic fantasy. Its world brings together humans, Nhaga, Rekon and Tokkebi, with competing loyalties and deep distrust between peoples. The opening volume follows an unlikely group drawn into a mission involving a Nhaga whose survival could have consequences far beyond the travelers themselves.

Its imaginative appeal is immediately apparent. Readers will find strange creatures, immense landscapes and an adventure that grows larger as the characters learn what is at stake. The Korean cultural elements are equally central: reports on the series have highlighted its use of dokkaebi, traditional ssireum wrestling and yutnori. These details give the world a texture of its own rather than treating a familiar European setting as the default for epic fantasy.

The prize’s focus on books that may last feels apt here. Lee’s series has already had more than twenty years to build an audience at home. The French recognition suggests its appeal can travel while retaining the features that made it distinctive in the first place.

How big has the series become internationally?

According to Yonhap’s report on the award, the series has sold more than one million copies and has been published in about 30 countries and 17 languages. Only the first of the four volumes had appeared in France when it won the Cultissime prize. The French edition had also been a finalist for the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire and the Prix Imaginales.

Those figures help explain why the award is more than a single-country news item. Fantasy is often discussed internationally through a relatively small set of English-language series. The Bird That Drinks Tears offers readers a chance to discover an established epic that began with a different literary and cultural frame. Its French success does not by itself predict the scale of its future English-language audience, but it gives new readers a compelling reason to take a look.

Can you read The Bird That Drinks Tears in English?

Yes. The first English volume is The Heart of the Nhaga, translated from Korean by Anton Hur and published by Harper Voyager on June 2, 2026. The publisher lists it as book one of The Bird That Drinks Tears. English readers should begin there; the French prize does not mean that a separate complete English edition of the four-volume story has appeared.

That distinction matters when searching for the book. The Bird That Drinks Tears is the name of the larger work or series, while The Heart of the Nhaga is the title on the first English volume. Readers who see the French cover or the prize announcement can use either title to find the same starting point in their preferred language.

For me, the most exciting part of this news is the prospect of more fantasy readers discovering a world that had already earned its reputation before many of us could read it in English. An award cannot tell us whether every reader will connect with a book. It can, however, draw attention to a story that has waited a long time for this kind of international visibility.

The short answer

The Bird That Drinks Tears won France’s 2026 Prix du livre Cultissime for its first French volume. It was previously a finalist, not the winner, of the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. English-language readers can start with Anton Hur’s translation of volume one, The Heart of the Nhaga, which arrived in June 2026.

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