News of a Kidnapping sells out in Tehran bookshops as detained opposition leader cites it as accurate reflection of his experience

The Nobel-prize winning author Gabriel García Márquez is revered for his evocation of a surreal and sometimes dangerous world where nothing is quite what it seems.

In this case, however, the country in question is not his native Colombia but Iran under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Copies of Márquez's 1996 work News of a Kidnapping have sold out from bookshops in Tehran this week after detained opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi said the book's description of Colombian kidnappings offers an accurate reflection of his life under house arrest.

Mousavi and fellow opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi have been under house arrest since mid-February when thousands of Iranians poured onto the streets in response to their calls for fresh protests in solidarity with pro-democracy movements in the Arab world.

Since then, they have had little access to the outside world. But Mousavi was allowed a brief meeting with his daughters last week, for the first time in seven months. The brief encounter took place in the presence of security officials but Mousavi reportedly told his daughters: "If you want to know about my situation in captivity, read Gabriel García Márquez's News of a Kidnapping."

Mousavi's comments spread quickly across Iran's huge online community, prompting hundreds of opposition supporters to seek out the book. Queues formed in some bookshops, and copies of the book sold out within days.

One Tehran-based journalist said: "It took me couple of hours to find a copy of the book. I first went to bookshops in the Karimkhan area, but none had a copy left. I went to Enghelab Avenue and I was amazed to see people queuing up to buy the book as if they were queuing up to buy a new Harry Potter."

At least 10 large bookshops in the capital told the Guardian their stocks of the book had sold out. None of them would say why.

"It got sold out in the last week or so, we have no copies left," said one shopkeeper. "I don't know why it happened, I can't say."

News of a Kidnapping, which was initially published in English in 1997, describes the abduction in the early 1990s of high-profile Colombians, including journalists and politicians, on the orders of the drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.

A news website, Aftab, listed the book at the top of bestseller chart last Thursday and Shargh, a reformist newspaper, reported an unprecedented demand for the book in big bookshops in Tehran.

García Márquez reacted to the news by sharing on his Facebook page a blogpost about the episode by an Iranian reporter.

Supporters of Mousavi have also launched a Facebook page, called "News of a Kidnapping, the status of a president in captivity", where readers have posted sections of the book. Some websites have put the Farsi translation of the book online for free download.

Supporters of Mousavi and Karroubi describe their status as "an abduction" and have called on the UN to investigate their disappearances. They believe Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was directly involved in them being placed under house arrest without any judicial ruling.