In her writing, Iva Pekárková explores cultural relationships—specifically, the compatibilities and clashes between different cultures and the synchronization of co-existing cultures. She dedicates some of her novels and vignettes to the relationships between European women and African men. She has a lot of personal experience in this field, as her partner of many years is a Nigerian some twelve years her junior.

Born in Prague in 1963, she cut short her studies of microbiology and virology and fled to the West in 1985. Via Austria, she migrated to the USA, where she lived mostly in New York, working as a taxi-driver. She also lived in Chicago, California and Arizona. In the late 1980s, she spent almost a year in Thailand teaching English in a refugee camp. She spent long periods in Canada, India, Malaysia and Nigeria, usually writing a travelogue based on her adventures. Since 2005 she has lived in London, which she considers home.