Authors
Iva PEKÁRKOVÁ
Fiction writer and journalist Iva Pekárková was born in Prague on 15 February 1963. She emigrated in 1985, just before completing a degree in microbiology and virology at Prague. She eventually settled in the United States, where she made a living as, among other things, a social worker, waitress and taxi driver. She also spent six months in Thailand. In 1997 she moved back to Prague, where she now devotes herself solely to literature.
Even literary detectives would have difficulties tracing the text of the author’s typescript debut Heslo double-sex (Codename ‘Double-sex’), an Orwellian tale set in a totalitarian state where, in order to make the slogan about universal equality a reality, all the inhabitants become hermaphrodites. Consequently, Pekárková did not appear in print till she published the volume she wrote as an émigré in Boston, Truck Stop Rainbows (published in Czech as Péra a perutě), the story of a Czech girl at the crossroads of life, who chooses the lot of a motorway prostitute as a way of defying the Socialist régime and to fulfil her longing for personal independence. Kulatý svět (published in English as The World is Round) is autobiographical prose, entirely documentary in character, in which Pekárková describes her own drastic experiences of a refugee camp in Traiskirchen, Austria, which is packed with people of different ethnicities and the homeless. Over the years spent as an émigré in the United States, she established her theme and protagonist type: the nonconformist young woman who, at the outset of the story and for political reasons, seeks to escape the clutches of the provincial setting of her former life, and discovers a new ideal in becoming part of the pulse of the North American megalopolises. The author’s credo is also linked both with her protest against the establishment and with her interest in the outlooks on life and genuine dramas of the people from the ‘bottom’ of society. Pekárková demonstrates all this in Dej mi ty prachy (Gimme the Money), a novel that is both sociological analysis of the members of specific ethnic groups and an attempt at a ‘female’ interpretation of the epics of modern history. To some degree, Pekárková projects the same theme in her novel Gang zjizvených, originally written in English as The SCARZ. In this work, she places universal émigré issues, filled with drastic and bizarre scenes (and the view that the loss of one’s home leaves a permanent mark on one’s life, impressing it with sinister and ill-fated signs), into the context of the adventure theme of an ‘escape’ ending with a chain of episodes from American life. The ‘spicing up’ of the story with elements of adventure signals the author’s inclination towards a Postmodern conception of narration. It also results in paralyzing her hallmark technique of documenting and focusing on reality, which normally form the axis of Pekárková’s fiction. This conception is most obvious in the last novel of her loosely conceived American triptych, Můj I. Q. (My I. Q.) set in socially and ethnically degraded communities. While the life of a white European woman with a Puerto Rican man of mixed heritage does have the flavour of an erotic romance, their deep-seated differences render this relationship short-lived and transitory. The two protagonists are far too different from each other, and, despite their longing to do so, fail to overcome the gap. Wisdom and primitiveness may appear to have a lot in common, especially in the early stages of a relationship, and yet the insuperable cultural differences inevitably surface each time, making impossible the illusion of possible mutual contact that can, on an emotional level, be free of all ‘traditional’ value systems. Pekárková’s ‘Indian’ travel writing, Do Indie kam jinam (To India – Where Else?), turned out to be one of her most successful books. In it, she presents her impressions of her second visit to this ancient civilization or, rather, the condition in which she finds the country that carries on the traditions of this ancient Far Eastern civilization. Instead of hackneyed, mainly ignorant philosophizing on Hinduism or Buddhism mediations on the spirit and soul, she describes her own experiences, including those that travel writers are usually too discreet to include. Such frankness lends a far more truthful tone to her testimony. In her travels, Pekárková reaches regions that the locals themselves refer to as the ‘end of the inhabitable world’, and everything that happens beyond the borders of the inhabitable world always appears incredible. The story leaves us with the same impression, adding, in its cliché-free manner, to the wealth of novels and features in Western literature, which portray the ‘journey to India’.
(vn)
E-mail: ivapekarkova@gmail.com
Web: http://pekarkova.blog.idnes.cz
Deutsch 
Iva PEKÁRKOVÁ, Deutsch.doc
En français Iva PEKÁRKOVÁ, En français.doc
