I have chosen to write a literary analysis about a book called Truck Stop Rainbows written by Iva Pekarkova in 1989. It depicts a journey of a young woman who is in search of her rainbows-symbols of beauty, freedom, and self-identity in a Communistic Czechoslovakia. David Ellis, a literary critic, wrote in his review that "rainbows remind us that history is sometimes shaped by thousands of tiny revolutions."
             The reasons I found this book interesting are many. First of all, the story takes place in a Communistic Czechoslovakia during early 1980s-a time I was growing up there. Secondly, the author is a Czech writer I have never heard about before I came to the United States. Not accidentally were her books banned in my homeland, and therefore published first in Canada in Sixty-Eight Publishers Edition before finding its way to Czech readers. It may sound very surprising, but the book was recommended to me by my friend from New York City, because Iva Pekarkova used to work there for seven years as a taxi driver, and gained a big popularity among New Yorkers.
             The main heroine of her book, Fialka, is a 25-year old student of socialistic psychology who lives in a society that decays and paralyzes her. She cannot fit herself anywhere, not even her own family. Her only family member, a grandmother, is a dull-eyed hypnotized zombie, who watches endless hours of television, and Fialka does not seem to have any closer tights to her as she would have to the tube. The TV of two channels, that was available at that time, is a proof to her that people like her grandmother are just "petit bourgeois who let themselves being effectively brainwashed by its chattering" (38).
             The alienations that she feels for her grandmother is not any different from the one she feels among her friends. There is only one soul mate that Fialka is able to talk to: Patrick. His way of defeating the political system is by living a Casanova lifestyle,...