These short stories in Portuguese and novellas fit in an afternoon. They're the friendliest way to practice the language without fighting a 500-page book.
Brazilian masters like Machado de Assis and Lima Barreto share the shelf with Poe, Kafka and Voltaire in translation. Read at your own pace and pick up new vocabulary story by story.
Choose a genre, open the PDF and start with the shortest one. Every book downloads free, with no sign-up.
📚
Download every short story and book in Portuguese on this page
All the books on this page in one ZIP file, instead of downloading them one by one.
We will redirect you to accounts.google.com to complete sign-in.
Email and name only · We never send spam
Access unlocked
Download every short story and book in Portuguese on this page
All the books on this page in one ZIP file, instead of downloading them one by one.
Direct download · One ZIP file
Download started. Check your downloads folder for the ZIP.
Classics
Classic Short Stories
Poe, Maupassant, Chekhov and Andersen wrote some of the most imitated short stories ever, here in Portuguese. Each one reads in a single sitting, perfect for practicing the language in spare moments.
Poe's early tales, including Metzengerstein, Berenice, Morella and Bon-Bon. The psychological horror and dark humor that made him famous are already here.
Maupassant's stories grouped into love stories, horror and mystery tales, and moral tales. Short, precise pieces by the French master of the modern short story.
Machado de Assis is the great storyteller of the Portuguese language, and his short stories are still required reading in Brazilian schools. Next to him are Lima Barreto and Álvares de Azevedo, whose Noite na Taverna is Brazil's classic gothic tale.
Ten stories by Machado de Assis, including A Cartomante, Pai contra Mãe and Um Homem Célebre. The ideal way into the greatest storyteller of the Portuguese language.
A midnight conversation between a young man and a married woman, told with all of Machado de Assis' ambiguity. One of the most studied short stories in Portuguese.
The Devil decides to found his own church and learns that human nature is more contradictory than he expected. A short, sharp satire by Machado de Assis.
Lima Barreto's stories, led by the one about an impostor who builds a career pretending to speak a language nobody knows. Humor, social critique and city life in early 1900s Rio.
Five drunk friends trade stories of crime, passion and death in a tavern. The gothic classic of Romanticism in Portuguese, in a National Library edition.
Kafka, Conrad, Tolstoy and Oscar Wilde at their shortest, all translated into Portuguese. A man turned into an insect, a trip up the Congo and a ghost who can't scare anyone, each in a few pages.
Poe invented the detective story with Auguste Dupin, and Conan Doyle made it famous with Sherlock Holmes. Start with Os Crimes da Rua Morgue and follow the thread to the final duel with Moriarty.
Both cases of detective Auguste Dupin, The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, the stories in which Poe invented detective fiction.
A red-haired pawnbroker lands an absurd, well-paid job, and Sherlock Holmes smells a plot at once. One of the detective's cleverest cases, complete in a few pages.
H. G. Wells' Martian invasion, told as a radio script, opens the section. Then come Jules Verne's journalist of the year 2889 and H. P. Lovecraft's forbidden gods.
A day in the life of a press tycoon in the 29th century, with video calls, news at home and air travel. Verne imagined the future with amazing accuracy.
Plays read fast because they're pure dialogue, which makes them perfect for practicing spoken Portuguese. They go from Euripides' Electra and Gil Vicente's Auto da Barca do Inferno to the comedies of Martins Pena.
The souls of a nobleman, a friar, a judge and others try to board the boat to Paradise, but the Devil has other plans. Gil Vicente's most read play, from the founder of Portuguese-language theater.
Newly widowed, Bernarda forces eight years of mourning on her five daughters, and the confinement ends in tragedy. García Lorca's last play, complete in Portuguese.
A country judge settles absurd disputes his own way while a young couple plans to run away. The one-act comedy that started Brazilian comedy of manners, in a National Library edition.
A young student meets a stranger at an inn who turns out to be Satan, and follows him on a journey of philosophical dialogue. Álvares de Azevedo's Romantic drama.
Voltaire mocked optimism, Gogol mocked Russian bureaucracy and Machado de Assis mocked Rio's elite. The irony lands even better when you read it in Portuguese.
Candide travels the world convinced that everything happens for the best, while wars, shipwrecks and earthquakes prove him wrong. Voltaire's most famous satire.
A giant from the star Sirius and a man from Saturn visit Earth and marvel at human vanity. A short philosophical tale by Voltaire, an early forerunner of science fiction.
A dead man writes his memoirs from the grave and looks back on his life with irony and no mercy. The novel that turned Machado de Assis into a world classic.
O Gato de Botas, O Patinho Feio, A Sereiazinha and João e Maria, each in a few pages. If your child already knows the story in English, reading it in Portuguese is much easier.
A dog who goes back to the wild, a horse who tells his own life and a doctor with a terrible secret. Short novels by Jack London, Anna Sewell and Stevenson for readers who want more than stories.
A pilot stranded in the desert meets a little prince who travels between planets. One of the most translated books in the world, with the original illustrations.
