A visitor to Independent Book Week in Jerusalem calls the event “like magic. With old books, and with artists, and with crafts, and with children, and music, and beer that's the best you can ask for.”

Independent Book Week was held at Hansen House, a historic leper-hospital-turned-cultural-venue, and it showcases the vast variety of books that are being published in the independent market in Israel - titles not likely to be available at the better-known Hebrew Book Week held every year.

Hansen House is located in the Talbiyeh neighborhood of Jerusalem, just below the Jerusalem Center for the Performing Arts. Designed and built by the German architect Conrad Schick as a leper hospital, it opened in 1887. The compound, added to the Jerusalem Municipality’s list of 110 buildings, was declared an historic site worthy of preservation in 2011 under the auspices of the Society For Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites, and today houses the Center for Design, Media and Technology.