Stores downtown reported huge lunchtime crowds, and some memoir-hunters trekked all the way to Changi Airport bookshops to beat the crowds.

Of 12 bookstores contacted yesterday, only one -- Borders in Orchard Road -- had any left: about 30 copies of the Chinese edition of book.

Ms Jaey Neo, a 35-year-old IT support specialist, visited four stores near her office in Shenton Way before she found a copy.

"For the younger generation, this book will be a good way to learn about Singapore's history," she said.

Others looking for the book yesterday were not as lucky. When foodstall-owner Yim Yuen Chun, 34, got to Popular bookstore at Orchard MRT station at 5 pm, she found only a sign saying it was sold out.

Bookstores said that their stocks had sold out by yesterday afternoon and that they were waiting for the next delivery.

Said Miss Low Kar Tiang, manager of Times the Bookshop at Centrepoint: "The phone has been ringing constantly, and practically every call is about the book." Even more remote bookstores at Tampines Mall and the Jurong IMM Megamart were sold out. A staff member at Times at Changi Airport said customers had gone there after trying stores downtown.

A spokesman for Times Publishing, one of the co-publishers of the memoirs, said he could not confirm how many books had been sold so far.

But he told The Straits Times that they were supplying bookstores with whatever they had, and that a second print run of 35,000 books was already underway.