Gordimer is praised for her body of work in both long and short fiction. Critics commend her ability to reflect the changing times in South Africa through stories that demonstrate what daily life is like for the people living in that nation. Many scholars find Gordimer's perspective to be of great literary and historical value. In Contemporary Literature, Nancy Bazin notes:

Nadine Gordimer says she is not a political person; yet her writings document, decade by decade, the impact of politics on personal lives and what an increasingly radical white South African woman felt, thought, and imagined during the rise and fall of apartheid.

Echoing these sentiments, Rowland Smith, writing in Dictionary of Literary Biography praises Gordimer's work as a means of tracing the dramatic social and political changes in South Africa over the course of her life. He writes:

Gordimer's career is remarkable for the...