Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Nadine Gordimer is generally viewed as a liberal champion of justice against the evils of apartheid South Africa. This provocative rereading of her works sees a more ambivalent and culturebound Gordimer. Wagner examines Gordimer's construction of female identity, her images of blacks, and her landscape iconography, and finds her very much a product of white colonial perspective.

Also examined are the tensions between liberal humanism and radical politics in the novels and her status as a feminist writer. The conclusion reviews the links between romanticism, generalisations, and stereotypes in her work, in the context of a discussion of her latest novel, My Son's Story.