Advanced 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.
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.