Literary fiction and Portuguese folk tales

Quieter stories about memory, family and art: a boy who finds a blue notebook at a fair, a grandmother who finds a new way to reach her grandson in London, a Lisbon painter whose block lifts in her mother's village in the Alentejo, a writer coming home to Braga after his mother's death.

At C1 the stories turn inward: a famous novelist who stops writing and retreats to a village near Marvão, a retired philosopher contemplating his life beside the Tejo, a fado composer who loses her voice. They are character-driven and reward slow reading.

More than half of the genre is the Clássicas collection: nineteenth-century Portuguese folk tales adapted into modern European Portuguese, with a vain queen, a treacherous maid, enchanted maidens, witches, giants and princes. Most are B1 and B2 and part of the premium collection; O Coelho, at A2, is free. Start with O Caderno Azul at A1, or, for the folk tales, with O Coelho.