The Stories Cities Tell

A move in Lisbon mobilizes an entire block. An audition in Bogotá brings two sisters face-to-face with a borrowed name. In Venice, the wrong key threatens a dinner that has taken years to happen.

In The Stories Cities Tell, Paulo Ehms brings together twenty stories of humor, desire, tension, and life together. Stairways, lobbies, courtyards, canals, and streets change the course of events: they bring strangers together, prolong disputes, and force detours on people who had everything planned.

From São Paulo to Tokyo, from Dakar to Seattle, the characters find themselves in particular situations in recognizable places. You do not need to know the cities to follow their choices. The stories can be read in sequence or separately, with shifts in era, rhythm, and point of view.

Each story is preceded by a brief historical and geographical introduction that does not reveal the plot. Original illustrations accompany the reading, and the closing notes distinguish documented facts from inventions.

Twenty Stories of Streets and People.