Short stories
Original stories in Brazilian Portuguese for each level, with comprehension questions. Tap any word to hear it, tap a dotted word to see its meaning, and listen to the whole story read aloud.
Beginner
Short stories
20 original stories written for this level, each with a comprehension check.
O pão de queijo da Dona Lurdes
A bus driver in Belo Horizonte has the same breakfast every day, until one morning there is only one pão de queijo left.
A feira de domingo
Beatriz goes to the Sunday market in São Paulo alone, with her sick mother's shopping list.
Primeiro dia no escritório
On his first day at a new job in Campinas, Lucas arrives early and helps a stranger in the office kitchen.
O gato do vizinho
Every night a gray cat comes through Mariana's kitchen window in Porto Alegre, and her neighbor upstairs has a mystery of his own.
Açaí de verdade
Carolina from São Paulo loves açaí, and her friend in Belém wants to show her how people eat it there.
A visita da avó
Caio wants to cook a moqueca for his grandmother's visit to Salvador, but he is not a good cook.
Um dia de praia
Pedro takes everything for a perfect day on a beach in Florianópolis, but the wind has other plans.
Onde está a chave?
Joana has an important meeting in João Pessoa, and she can't find her house key anywhere.
O aniversário do seu Antônio
Seu Antônio turns seventy in Manaus and thinks his family has forgotten, so he goes fishing on the river alone.
O ônibus errado
New in Rio de Janeiro, Thiago takes a bus to a job interview downtown and suddenly sees the sea.
Quatro estações num dia
Camila from sunny Fortaleza spends her first full day at work in São Paulo, where the weather never stays the same.
O clássico na TV
In Recife, a husband and wife support rival soccer teams, and today the two teams play each other on TV.
Os sapatos vermelhos
Fernanda finds beautiful red shoes in Goiânia for her sister's wedding, but they are one size too small.
A mãe não atende
Gabriel calls his mother every Sunday evening, but tonight she doesn't answer the phone.
O violão do contador
A bored accountant in Curitiba starts learning the guitar, and his neighbors can hear every note.
O cachorro do ônibus
Every morning in Fortaleza a dog gets on the same bus alone, and a curious passenger decides to follow him.
Barulho às três da manhã
A tired teacher in Natal finally knocks on his new neighbor's door to complain about the noise at night.
A tapioca da gaúcha
A young woman from the South orders a very strange tapioca from seu Zé's stall in Olinda.
O celular no táxi
Vinícius leaves his phone in a taxi in Brasília, and the woman who finds it is about to catch a plane.
O presente da Dona Teresa
Twins in Vitória can't agree on a present for their mother's fiftieth birthday, so each one buys a present alone.
Elementary
Short stories
20 original stories written for this level, each with a comprehension check.
Férias em Jericoacoara
Juliana plans the perfect week on the coast of Ceará, and almost everything goes wrong.
A mangueira de Pirenópolis
A man remembers the July vacations of his childhood in a small town in Goiás, and goes back twenty years later.
A entrevista de emprego
While she waits for a job interview in Curitiba, Bianca helps a stranger with a broken printer.
Um recifense em Porto Alegre
Tiago moves from Recife to Porto Alegre and finds the South cold in more ways than one.
Açaí com peixe
Vanessa from São Paulo orders açaí in Belém and gets something she didn't expect.
Perdido em Olinda
During Carnaval in Olinda, Marcos loses his friends in the crowd and his phone dies.
A quadrilha de Campina Grande
A week before the festa junina dance competition, Pedro loses his dance partner.
Chuva na padaria
A busy bank manager in São Paulo gets caught in a summer storm on his way to an important meeting.
Doutor Internet
Felipe wakes up with a pain in his foot, reads about it online and is sure he's seriously ill.
A foto da feira
At an antiques market in São Paulo, Ana finds an old photo of a young woman who looks just like her.
O primeiro encontro
Gabriel and Fernanda meet on a dating app, and each one plans a first date around the other's favorite hobby.
O atalho
Three friends drive from São Paulo to Florianópolis, and one of them finds a shortcut on the GPS.
A moqueca do vô Dito
After her grandfather dies, Isadora tries to cook his famous moqueca from his old recipe notebook.
A noite sem luz
In Natal, the power goes out ten minutes before the last episode of a telenovela, and only one house still has light.
A visita surpresa
On a lazy Friday night in Recife, Larissa and Henrique find out that his mother is on her way up.
O cachorro carteiro
Every morning in Florianópolis, a dog leaves an envelope with a mysterious note at Débora's door.
O bolão
An office in Goiânia thinks it has won the lottery, and everyone celebrates in their own way.
Rede no barco
Vítor takes a riverboat from Manaus to the Parintins festival, but he arrives late to hang his hammock.
Número errado
A widower in Fortaleza gets a text message meant for someone else, about a little girl's birthday cake.
O papagaio da dona Cida
In a small town in Bahia, a prize-winning cake disappears from the church fair, and a talkative parrot may know something.
Intermediate
Short stories
40 original stories written for this level, each with a comprehension check.
O discurso de despedida
A young employee in Recife has to write a farewell speech for a quiet colleague nobody in the office really knows.
A coxinha do seu Valdir
When a flashy chain opens across the street from his snack bar in Belo Horizonte, an old cook notices a strange daily customer.
O livro emprestado
In a used bookstore in Porto Alegre, Renata finds a book she once gave to the friend she hasn't spoken to in fifteen years.
O mistério do sexto andar
In a quiet apartment building in Curitiba, warm bread starts appearing at every door, and the building manager decides to find out who is leaving it.
A banda da vovó
Hours before her wedding in Salvador, Tainá learns that the DJ can't come, and her grandmother makes a few phone calls.
A quarta tentativa
A nurse in Florianópolis who has failed her driving test three times goes back for a fourth try, on a rainy day.
A mangueira da discórdia
In Belém, two old neighbors have fought for thirty years over a mango tree, until one of them has a granddaughter with no job and an idea.
A resposta da universidade
A student in Manaus wins a scholarship to study in France, but she doesn't know how to leave her mother and the family food stall.
O dono do Biscoito
A shy programmer in São Paulo finds a wet beagle at his gate and posts its photo online to find the owner.
O palco vazio
Forty minutes before the main show of a music festival in Goiânia, the headline band is stuck on the road and the producer needs someone to go on stage.
A herança da tia Zuleide
When his great-aunt dies in Niterói, Rodrigo inherits only her bad-tempered old parrot, which keeps saying very strange things.
Os bilhetes amarelos
An illustrator working in a coworking space in Fortaleza starts finding anonymous notes on her drawings every morning.
As tranças da Sofia
A bus driver walks into a women's hair salon in São Luís with an unusual request and only five days to spare.
A reunião de segunda
Fernanda works from her grandmother's house in Campinas, and on the day of a very important video meeting she leaves her desk for four minutes.
A dívida
Thirteen years after his best friend vanished with his savings, Bruno gets an invitation to a restaurant opening in Vitória.
O piano do subsolo
In her diary, a journalism student in João Pessoa writes about the ghostly piano music her neighbors hear in the middle of the night.
Os noivos fugitivos
In Juiz de Fora, two widowed retirees announce that they want to get married, and their grown-up children are not pleased.
Sem sal, por favor
After losing her bank job in Teresina, Keila starts selling lunch boxes from her kitchen, and one customer always makes the same odd request.
A vaga 17
In a condo in Natal, a strict lawyer and the young drummer next door go to war over a parking space.
A doceria dos três irmãos
Three siblings who barely speak inherit their father's sweet shop in Pelotas, with a condition in the will that none of them wanted.
A onça que não posou
A nature photographer spends five days on the rivers of the Pantanal hoping to photograph a jaguar.
O mapa do diamante
In Lençóis, in the Chapada Diamantina, two tourists from Rio buy an old treasure map and ask a young guide to follow it with them.
O Saci da pousada
A skeptical city man on vacation in São Luiz do Paraitinga decides to prove that the strange things happening at his guesthouse have a logical explanation.
As iniciais no banco
An old man takes his granddaughter on the steam train from Ouro Preto to Mariana, looking for something he left at the station sixty years ago.
A garrafa de 1998
A fisherman in Paraíba finds an old bottle on the beach with a letter from a girl who wrote it decades earlier.
Carta dos Lençóis
In a letter to her sister, a teacher from Curitiba describes her trip to the Lençóis Maranhenses, which did not go as planned.
A areia de Noronha
On the last day of a family vacation in Fernando de Noronha, an eight-year-old girl tries to take a little of the island home for her grandmother.
As pegadas ao contrário
A truck driver lost at night in the Amazon rainforest of Pará follows a line of footprints, hoping they will lead him to help.
Cinco dias de rede
A young man from São Paulo loses his phone on the first day of a five-day boat trip up the Amazon from Belém to Manaus.
Como é a cachoeira?
A bored tour guide at the Iguaçu Falls gets a question from a tourist that he has never been asked before.
O queijo do tio Zeca
A young woman from São Paulo inherits a small cheese farm in Minas Gerais and goes there only to sell it.
O mapa de papel
A father insists on using only a paper map on a camping trip with his teenage daughter in the Chapada dos Veadeiros.
O guarda de Dois Rios
A woman travels to Ilha Grande with an old photo of her grandfather, who worked as a guard at the island's prison decades ago.
O lobisomem de Oeiras
In an old town in Piauí, a man who is the seventh son of his family is blamed when strange things start happening on full-moon nights.
A guia e o professor
On her first week as a tour guide in Paraty, a young woman is followed by an old man who keeps correcting her.
Flutuar no Rio da Prata
A sixty-year-old man who has been afraid of water all his life is given a river snorkeling trip in Bonito as a present.
A mula sem cabeça
In the old town of Pirenópolis, people start hearing hoofbeats and seeing sparks in the streets at midnight, and a police sergeant has to investigate.
Ninguém afunda no Jalapão
When their jeep breaks down in the middle of the Jalapão, two travelers who can't stand each other have to spend a night together.
Diário de Abrolhos
A biology student keeps a diary during a week on a research boat counting humpback whales off the coast of Bahia.
A parede mais antiga
A graffiti artist from São Paulo reluctantly visits the prehistoric rock paintings of the Serra da Capivara, in Piauí.
Upper-intermediate
Short stories
40 original stories written for this level, each with a comprehension check.
Cinco estrelas
A delivery rider in São Paulo who never breaks the app's rules gets to know the old man who orders the same soup every night.
Assembleia extraordinária
A crônica about a condomínio meeting in Belo Horizonte called to punish whoever plays the saxophone at night.
Plantão de sexta
On his first night shift alone in a public hospital in Recife, a young doctor meets the patient who comes every Friday with the same complaint.
O caderno do fundo
A Portuguese teacher at a public school on the edge of Salvador tries to understand the student who never hands in an essay.
A Casa de Vidro
A manicurist from Manaus enters a reality show with a plan to win as the villain, and discovers the cameras see more than she thought.
O rei do caqui
A fruit seller at a street market in Curitiba becomes an internet star after his daughter posts a video of him, and fame comes with a price.
Crônica do engarrafamento
Stuck for hours in the rain on a São Paulo highway, a columnist watches the drivers around him, and one of them is rehearsing something important.
Ensaio de quinta
A shy accountant in Rio joins the drum section of a samba school, and has to keep his secret from his very serious boss.
O furo
A young reporter in Porto Alegre receives documents that could be the scoop of her career, if only one small detail would stop bothering her.
O pivô
Three young founders in Florianópolis have one week to save their party app before the money runs out.
A última banca da praça
A short piece of reportage about a newsstand in Belém that has survived the end of printed newspapers, until the city decides it has to go.
Seu Severino sabe tudo
A crônica about the doorman of a Copacabana building who knows everything about the residents, while they know almost nothing about him.
O hotel do centro
An architect is sent to assess an occupied old hotel in central São Paulo for demolition, and finds a story she didn't expect inside.
Corrida para o aeroporto
A ride-hailing driver in Salvador picks up a passenger he knows very well: the man who fired him.
A vaquinha
A community kitchen in Fortaleza starts an online fundraiser to buy a new stove, and one donation is far too big to be ordinary.
Elogio do escritório
After three years of working from home in Goiânia, a columnist makes an unfashionable case for going back to the office.
Parabéns, buraco
Residents of a street in São Luís lose patience with a pothole that has been there for a year, and decide to throw it a birthday party.
O ônibus das cinco e dez
A short piece of reportage follows a cleaning worker on her long daily commute from Ceilândia to the center of Brasília, and what she does with those hours.
Roteiro de atendimento
On her first job at a call center in Natal, a young woman learns to follow the script, until a caller needs something the script doesn't cover.
O muro cinza
When the city of São Paulo orders a famous mural to be painted gray, the worker sent to do it has a very personal reason to hesitate.
O anjo de Ouro Preto
A police chief investigates the theft of a precious wooden angel from a church in Ouro Preto, and the laboratory report changes everything.
Mistério no trem da serra
On the scenic train from Curitiba to Morretes, a retired teacher who loves crime novels finally gets a real case to solve.
A última fita
A late-night radio host in Recife starts receiving anonymous cassette tapes about a frevo singer who vanished thirty years ago.
O caso das galinhas
In a small town in Minas Gerais, someone is stealing the hens of the mayor's mother-in-law, and the whole town takes sides.
O papagaio testemunha
In Manaus, a detective investigates a burglary whose only witness is a forty-year-old parrot that keeps repeating one sentence.
A avó de Alcântara
In 2071, an engineer at the space elevator in Maranhão is sent to persuade the most stubborn resident of all to move: her own grandmother.
Neve encomendada
In a future where the snow in Brazil's mountain towns is made to order, a technician has a night when the machines break down during the winter festival.
O sinal de Aguiar
In 2049, a radio telescope in the backlands of Paraíba picks up a mysterious repeating signal, and the whole world wants to know where it comes from.
O robô que aprendeu forró
An old accordion player in Caruaru wants nothing to do with the care robot his daughter sends him, until a power outage changes things.
Memória emprestada
In a future Belo Horizonte where people can buy other people's memories, a man who has never seen the sea pays for someone's first day at the beach.
O caderno de Dona Shizue
Clearing out her Japanese grandmother's house in the Vale do Ribeira, a young woman finds a notebook full of numbers she cannot read.
A videira do nono
Three siblings in the Serra Gaúcha are about to sell their Italian great-great-grandfather's vineyard, but the youngest asks for one more month.
O caderno preto de seu Jorge
Closing her Lebanese grandfather's old fabric shop in São Paulo, a woman finds the books where he wrote down eighty years of customers.
A porta das enchentes
As the river rises in Blumenau, a granddaughter drives from Florianópolis to rescue her German-Brazilian grandmother, who will only leave on one condition.
O relógio do coronel
A gold pocket watch follows three generations of a cacao family in southern Bahia, from the boom years through ruin and back.
A guarda-parque
A park ranger in the Chapada dos Veadeiros has fined the same old farmer for nine years for setting fires, until the worst drought anyone remembers.
O rio que mudou de lugar
When the Purus river starts swallowing their riverbank in the Amazon, a small community must decide where to go, and the oldest fisherman has a theory.
O poço de seu Cícero
In the third year of drought in the Pernambuco backlands, a grandmother breaks a promise to her late father and opens the well he sealed in 1958.
O lanterninha
A young lighting technician who doesn't believe in ghosts starts working late at the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus and makes an unusual friend.
O passageiro da BR-116
On a foggy night in the Bahian backlands, a truck driver breaks his own rule and gives a ride to an old man who asks him to deliver a letter.
Advanced
Short stories
40 original stories written for this level, each with a comprehension check.
Onze anos de bom-dia
Two neighbors in a Copacabana building who have only ever said good morning to each other get stuck together in the elevator during a blackout.
A navalha de seu Dirceu
An old barber in São Paulo's Bixiga tells us about the one client who has never said a word in eleven years, until the day he does.
O último áudio do tio Arlindo
At a family wake in São Paulo, a lawyer plays a recording the dead uncle left for the occasion, and nobody is safe.
Crônica sobre nada
A Rio newspaper columnist with a deadline at six and nothing to write about goes downstairs to the lobby.
Prova de vida
A retired woman in Rio discovers at the ATM that, according to the system, she has been dead since March.
A saideira
Two old friends meet at their usual Botafogo bar on a Thursday, as they have for forty years, but one of them has brought an envelope.
Elogio da garoa
A São Paulo columnist remembers his grandfather's love of the city's fine drizzle, long gone, until one Tuesday morning.
Domingo no Aterro
Watching Sunday life in Rio's Aterro do Flamengo, a columnist becomes fascinated by an old man who flies a kite alone near the airport.
As instruções de Helena
A widower in São Paulo who has always disliked plants insists on keeping his late wife's apartment jungle alive.
O sobrado da Tijuca
With a bad toothache, a woman goes to a dental clinic in Rio and finds it is the house she grew up in and left at nineteen.
O carimbo
In a ministry in Brasília, the one rubber stamp that certifies copies breaks, and the paperwork to replace it needs that very stamp.
Prezada Lígia
A widower of seventy-eight in São Paulo emails the woman he dated for one summer in Rio in 1968, and she writes back.
O homem dos guarda-chuvas
An office worker on Avenida Paulista spends two years trying to work out how one umbrella seller always knows when it is about to rain.
O amigo secreto
In a São Paulo accounting firm, nobody wants to draw the cold senior partner in the office Secret Santa, so a secret market in names is born.
Bilhetes amarelos
Anonymous yellow notes start appearing on the mailboxes of a São Paulo apartment complex, and the residents' group chat goes to war.
Última sessão
On the night an old movie theater in central Rio closes for good, its projectionist runs one last film for four spectators, one of whom he has known for fifty years.
Diário de um insone
In the diary his doctor told him to keep, a man in Curitiba who cannot sleep notes a lit window across the street at three in the morning.
A voz de Guarulhos
For twelve years, a traveling salesman has heard his ex-wife's recorded voice in airports all over Brazil, until the recordings are about to be replaced.
Reunião de alinhamento
A satirical account of a three-hour corporate meeting in a glass tower on São Paulo's Faria Lima, interrupted by an intern's simple question.
Fotografia 3x4
An old photographer in São Paulo's Liberdade district, who has taken ID photos for sixty years, receives a customer he has photographed every ten years since 1966.
O Umbu da Coxilha
An agronomist sent to survey a sold ranch on the pampa spends a day with the old ranch hand who refuses to leave it.
O Tijolo Assinado
A migrant from Paraíba who helped build a skyscraper on Avenida Paulista in 1969 hides a secret in its walls.
A Receita da Vó Zica
A journalist is sent to get her ninety-year-old grandmother's famous pão de queijo recipe and gets a confession instead.
O Filho do Boto
A biologist counting pink river dolphins on the Solimões hires a boatman who claims a strange family tie to them.
O Olheiro
In a fishing village in Florianópolis, an old mullet spotter with failing eyes is replaced by his grandson's drone.
O Último Aboio
When an old cowherd in the sertão breaks his leg and the cattle scatter, his city-bred grandson has to call them home.
O Peso do Ouro
An old clerk of the royal smelting house in Vila Rica writes down the day an enslaved woman brought him the gold to buy her freedom.
O Retrato do Barão
In 1889 a photographer from Rio keeps a diary while taking a coffee baron's family portrait on a failing estate.
Cartas do Planalto
Between 1958 and 1960 a carpenter from Bahia writes to his wife while helping to build Brasília.
A Faixa de 1950
A sign painter in Madureira paints a victory banner before the 1950 World Cup final at the Maracanã.
A Mão na Farinha
During a village's cassava flour making in the Recôncavo, the gossips watch a widow and a widower very closely.
O Mar Não Tem Portão
When a gated estate cuts the trail from his beach near Paraty, an old caiçara fisherman plans his answer in silence.
O Mouro de Pirenópolis
A man who has proudly played a losing Moor in Pirenópolis's Cavalhadas for thirty-two years learns his son will ride for the Christians.
O Babaçu Livre
Women who crack babassu nuts in Maranhão fight a rancher who has fenced off and poisoned their palm grove.
A Geada Negra
A woman remembers the July night in 1975 when a black frost destroyed her family's coffee farm in northern Paraná.
O Soldado da Borracha
Clearing out her grandmother's room in Fortaleza, a woman finds a sealed letter sent from a rubber estate in Acre in 1944.
O Relógio da Estação
After the last train leaves a small town in Minas Gerais in 1971, the old station master keeps coming to work every morning.
A Dívida do Onceiro
A former jaguar hunter, now a guide in the Pantanal, takes a famous photographer to find a scarred old jaguar.
O Cordel da Ponte
A cordel poet at the Caruaru market mocks a mayor's useless bridge, and the mayor tries a cleverer way to win him over.
A Cidade Que Voltou
Forty years after the Sobradinho dam flooded her home town, a drought brings its ruins back to the surface.
Mastery
Short stories
40 original stories written for this level, each with a comprehension check.
O livro paralelo
When an old registrar in Diamantina finally retires, his young successor finds a secret ledger that records everything the law refuses to register.
Nota do tradutor
Translating a famous American novel in Porto Alegre, Marina recognizes a sentence she has read before, in a forgotten book from Pelotas.
Uma tarde de pobreza autêntica
At a charity auction in São Paulo's richest neighborhood, a banker pays a fortune for an unusual experience, guided by the hostess's chauffeur.
A chuva das três
Everyone in Belém knows it rains at three in the afternoon; only one widow in the Cidade Velha knows why, until the day the rain does not come.
Ao pé da letra
After a fall at the office, an accountant in Recife stops understanding figurative language, with surprising effects on his company and his marriage.
Depoimento do síndico
A building manager in Copacabana comes to the police station to report that the young cellist in apartment 802 has vanished, and insists he is a very discreet man.
Personagem secundária
A waitress with two lines in a novel set in Curitiba tells us what life is like on the edges of someone else's story.
O último manuscrito
After a famous novelist dies in Salvador, his editor of thirty-seven years finds his final novel, and it is about her.
Cartas à Prefeitura
A retired man in Goiânia writes to City Hall about a pothole in his street, and the pothole keeps growing between the replies.
O discurso
A senator's speechwriter in Brasília hides a message inside the most important speech of his boss's career.
O processo das rosas
A retired judge in Porto Alegre keeps a diary to prove that his neighbor is poisoning his late wife's roses.
Destinatário errado
An analyst in Florianópolis starts receiving weekly e-mails from a stranger meant for another woman with her name.
A mulher que desbotava
A planning coordinator at a bank on the Faria Lima starts turning transparent in exact proportion to how much she is ignored.
Meio segundo
During tense trade talks at the Itamaraty, a minister forgets his microphone is on, and his interpreter has half a second to decide what he said.
Errata
An old proofreader at a Belo Horizonte newspaper begins using the corrections column to say something he has never said out loud.
Ata da assembleia extraordinária
The official minutes of a residents' meeting in a luxury condominium in Barra da Tijuca, where the agenda is security, smells and the neighboring favela.
O alfaiate de sombras
Behind a narrow door in Salvador's Baixa dos Sapateiros, an old tailor mends not clothes but people's shadows.
Biografia não autorizada
Extracts from a rigorous, independent biography of Ezequiel Moura Tavares, a civil servant from Natal, by a biographer who knows him remarkably well.
O rei do trocadilho
At a bar in Santa Teresa, an eighty-one-year-old champion of puns faces a young internet comedian with four thousand jokes in a notebook.
Obrigada
In his last week before retiring, an old registrar in Recife meets the woman whose unusual first name he allowed forty years earlier.
A letra do escrivão
In Salvador in 1691, an old notary recalls the will he took down at a dying sugar planter's bedside, while an enslaved woman watched his pen.
Cartas à mana Amélia
In 1868, a young woman newly arrived at the imperial Court in Rio writes to her sister about balls, a pompous suitor and a newspaper column everyone is quoting.
O caminho que não existe
In the hills of Minas Gerais in the 1750s, the woman who lays a quilombo's false trails finds a wounded slave-catcher at the bottom of one of her pits.
Caixa alta
On May 13, 1888, a Black typesetter in Rio composes the headline that ends slavery, letter by backwards letter, then carries the page to the coffee farm where his mother still works.
O guarda-livros de Manaus
In 1910, at the height of the rubber boom, a bookkeeper in Manaus receives a dictated letter from a rubber tapper on the Purus who wants to know how much he still owes.
A viradora de páginas
In February 1922, a nineteen-year-old music student turns the pages for a pianist at São Paulo's Modern Art Week while the audience howls.
O vaqueiro que vendeu a sombra
Told in the rhyming manner of a cordel poet, the tale of a cowboy from the Cariri who sells his shadow to the Devil in a drought and then has to buy it back.
Receita de bolo
In São Paulo in 1973, a newspaper's food writer finds her recipes printed in the gaps left by the censors, and readers write in to say the cakes don't work.
O calendário de 1970
In 1979, after the amnesty, a woman waits at Rio's Galeão airport for the brother who went into exile nine years earlier and now returns with a family she has never met.
O telefone de São Cristóvão
In 1877, the messenger who has run errands for the imperial palace in Rio for thirty years is put on the other end of the Emperor's new telephone.
O alfaiate de Vila Rica
In Vila Rica in 1789, a tailor who takes the measurements of the town's conspirators is called to testify about what he heard in his shop.
A reza de Mãe Dondinha
In the backlands of Sergipe in the 1930s, a band of cangaceiros rides into a village and orders the old prayer woman to make one of them bulletproof.
Retrato de viúvo
In Rio in 1866, a photographer's assistant helps take a portrait of a baron beside his dead wife, a man the whole city says married her only for her money.
O remador da Cabanagem
In Belém in 1835, as rebels take the city, a judge disguised as a woman escapes up the rivers in the canoe of a silent Indigenous boatman.
Previsão do tempo
On the night of December 13, 1968, as military censors take over a Rio newsroom, the paper's pedantic weatherman is asked to write a forecast he knows is scientifically wrong.
O vacinador
In Rio in November 1904, a young vaccinator enters a crowded tenement in Saúde just as the city rises against compulsory vaccination.
A letra torta
In Salvador in 1798, a writing master's young apprentice learns why, when seditious papers appear on church doors, a beautiful handwriting can be a death sentence.
Relatório sobre o baile
In Rio in 1976, a police informer is sent to spy on the soul dances of the Black Rio movement, and his reports slowly change.
O forno de Dona Brites
In Recife in 1654, as the Dutch surrender and the Jewish community prepares to leave, a girl goes to the Catholic baker who has secretly baked their Passover bread for twenty years.
O gateado
By the fire in a ranch shed in Rio Grande do Sul, an old gaúcho tells his grandson about the horse that refused to cross a river during the civil war of 1893.