Upper-intermediate stories
Original Brazilian Portuguese stories written for this level, with comprehension questions.
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.