Shoppers can discover a true bargain among the bookshelves today after 300 copies of a new novel have been hidden among the titles of unsuspecting bookshops across London.

The Idiocy of Idears by an unnamed author has been planted in the fiction, poetry, art, philosophy and travel sections of Waterstones, Borders, Foyles and Blackwells in Central London.

The book, made up of the jottings of a dyslexic schoolboy Gustav Claudius, is a "brilliant expose of an education system that has now all but disappeared", says publishers The Aquarium.

Steve Lowe, director of The Aquarium, who went out this morning and planted the hand stamped copies in stores across London, said: "It's almost the opposite of shoplifting."

"We don't think Waterstones will say that because it's been left in their shop therefore it belongs to them.

"I think the ones in the fiction and travel sections will be discovered first, but the ones in the poetry and philosophy sections will probably hang around a lot longer."

Copies have been planted in Waterstones and Hatchards, Piccadilly; Blackwells, Borders and Foyles, Charing Cross Road and Waterstones and Borders, Oxford Street.

Further copies are available from The Aquarium L-13, Farringdon Road and will soon be available in bookshops in Brighton, Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool and Dublin.

Waterstones declined to comment.

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