Two children flee together with a grown up from a slum in Rio because this man had problems with the local drug lord. They end up in the house where a rich American citizen lives with his daughter.

A group of armed soldiers is sent to the Northeast of Brazil in an attempt to stop a famine-struck population from invading and stealing a food deposit in the dry backlands. While the alienation and insanity of people driven to hallucination by their latent hunger is conducted by the predictions of a religious figure, a truck driver observes the situation and remains torn between his friendship with the soldiers and his revolt against the lack of government action in fighting the misery that lingers over the region.

Writer Sílvio Proença needs to travel to São Paulo in order to promote his new book. At the airport, he meets a group of old mates. With the boarding canceled due to a strong storm, the group goes to the apartment of Marialva, daughter of one of Proença's friends. Seduced by Marialva's music and charms, Proença spends the night there, where he wakes up the next day, completely naked. Still groggy from his hangover, he goes to pick up the bread left outside the apartment; that's when the wind closes the door and leaves him naked outside.

When a prominent U.S. Nobel Laureate arrives in Salvador, Bahia, the city with the largest black population in Brazil, he stirs emotions by championing a long-forgotten local writer named Pedro Archanjo, who believed that humanity would be improved only through miscegenation.

Brazil: in a gray city in the near future, religious sects and rats live on the prowl. It rains non-stop.