Reception
Anthony Sampson, a British writer, journalist and former editor of Drum, a magazine in Johannesburg in the 1950s, wrote in The New York Times that Burger's Daughter is Gordimer's "most political and most moving novel". He said that its "political authenticity" set in the "historical background of real people" makes it "harshly realistic", and added that the blending of people, landscapes and politics remind one of the great Russian pre-revolutionary novels. In The New York Review of Books, Irish politician, writer and historian Conor Cruise O'Brien compared Gordimer's writing to that of Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, and described Burger's Daughter as "elegant" and "fastidious" and belonging to a "cultivated upper class". He said this style is not at odds with the subject matter of the story because Rosa Burger, daughter of a revolutionary, believes herself to be an "aristocrat of the revolution".
The New Internationalist magazine called Burger's Daughter "arguably best novel", and complimented her on her characterisation, attention to detail, and her ability to blend "the personal and the political". It said the book's "subtle, lyrical writing" takes you inside each character's head, which "is an enlivening but uncomfortable place to be." In an essay published in The New York Times Book Review, American novelist and critic A. G. Mojtabai said that despite the troubled times Gordimer was living through at the time, in Burger's Daughter she remains "subdued" and "sober", and even though she "scarcely raises her voice", it still "reverberates over a full range of emotion."
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