She founded Raya Agency for Arabic Literature eight years ago. After long internships in publishing houses in New York and Paris, Jraissati realised at the 2004 Frankfurt Book Fair that ‘publishers interested in the Arab world couldn’t get their hands on interesting books because they can’t read them.’ Surely they often simply don’t want to, I say. She laughs. ‘That’s the other part of the story. I wanted them to be interested, so I had a mission… you can’t be interested if you don’t know anything about it, so I wanted to be some sort of medium.’

Frankfurt book fair had a new daily this year, ‘Publishing Perspectives’, keeping trade visitors updated with the latest news and tracking the buzz. Yasmina Jraissati, RAYA agency gave an interview, and presented mubtada wa khabar, the collaborative platform for the Arab book industry that will have its first launch on Friday October 23rd, at the BIEL, Beirut. Do not miss if you’re in town!