A group of literature-loving friends bury letters to be opened 10 years later when they will confront the dreams of their youth with what the future has held in store for them.

Small-town trickster Pedro Malasartes has to face two great enemies: Próspero, who will do anything to impede such a lazy, cowardly person like Malasartes from dating his sister, Áurea; and Death incarnated, who wants to take a vacation after two thousand years collecting lives and intends on tricking Malasartes into assuming his tedio...

In 1894, with a coup d'état, President Floriano Peixoto closed down The National Congress, soon reinstated with co-religionaries in key positions. In the south of Brazil, the Maragatos revolutionaries would not come to terms with this. They rebelled and marched to Rio de Janeiro to join Admiral Saldanha's troops and depose the Presiden...