If there's a ground zero for literature in Washington, it's probably a small storefront on 11th Street. Gunter Grass, Cees Nooteboom, Nadine Gordimer, Adrienne Rich, Gore Vidal, Geoffrey Hill, Umberto Eco, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Ondaatje, Martin Amis -- Chapters has played host to these and other big guns of world literature. But even if the writer on a particular night's bill is little-known, the mere fact he or she is there provides a guarantee of quality. These booksellers don't showcase trash.

The same goes for the books they carry. Chapters doesn't have everything, although anything can be ordered. Instead, they have the books they like, which are almost invariably pretty good books. As would be expected from a store whose slogan is "littera scripta manet" -- a fragment from Horace that translates as "the written word remains" -- poetry, fiction and belles-lettres are particularly strong. The store celebrates Proust's birthday in July and usually has an annual George Eliot Memorial Lecture.

Chapters began when two Georgetown students, Terri Merz and Robin Diener, met on a junior-year abroad program. After an apprenticeship at Olsson's, they started Chapters at a small location on Eye Street in 1985. Five years later, Chapters moved to its present spot. In the best sense, the store is an old-fashioned place. Merz and Diener put up front and in the window the books they care about, not the ones they've been paid by the publisher to push. And while every chain bookstore has a cafe, Chapters offers tea and cookies on Friday afternoons -- for free. Most readings begin at 7 p.m.

-- David Streitfeld