Fuentes, Rushdie and Eco were friends and admirers of Calvino. He met Barthes, Lévi-Strauss and Queneau in Paris, translating Queneau’s work and enjoying a 13-year friendship with him. Perec was a good friend and fellow-Oulipian, while he knew Ginzburg and Pavese as colleagues at the publisher Einaudi, and wrote two libretti for Berio. He went to interview his hero Hemingway with Ginzburg, while Vidal and he were neighbours, living on the same street in Rome.