Retired teacher Pius Fernandez receives from one of his students an old notebook found in the back room of a shop in East Africa. It turns out to be the diary of a British officer who lived seven decades ago in the small town of Kikono. The diary captivates the teacher, and he tries to recreate the world in it, and breathe life into the souls trapped there, discovering a dark, burning secret, the secret of a simple man named “Pippa” whose life, after his marriage to “Mariamo,” became painfully linked to the life of the English officer. As Fernandez follows the diary's trail, he himself eventually becomes one of the tales of the Book of Secrets.
In this novel, which won the Giller Prize in its first edition, in 1994, Vasanji writes an influential work rich in questions, about a very rich and complex world, vibrant with colorful images, against the backdrop of great historical changes.
In this book, we will try to address the knowledge society through three main spaces: the Arab, the Gulf, and the Emirati, relying on data and numbers indicating the development of these spaces towards the knowledge society, without claiming comprehensive knowledge of all its aspects, as this matter requires extensive and more specialized studies. However, we seek to confirm an important issue, which is that the shift towards a knowledge society is no longer an intellectual luxury, but rather an urgent need that requires more plans, programmes, institutions, competencies and skills.
In our endeavor, we also show the position of the United Arab Emirates in its pursuit of a knowledge society, through many indicators, which confirm the great effort made by the political leadership towards developing various structures, in order to provide the potential for transformation towards a knowledge society, which, in our opinion, reflects the strategic vision. The state faces the necessities dictated by the processes of economic transformation into a knowledge economy.
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