The ironies that surround the liberal point of view in a multiracial society have been a persistent theme in Nadine Gordimer's work. In A Soldier's Embrace,… Southern Africa remains the setting, with one exception. There are a number of reasons, however, for finding the mixture not quite the same as before….

[The] "natives" of her early stories became first "African" and then later "Black". In her view, this last term is singular in being the only one which has not been imposed from above but has been chosen by the black people themselves. (More probably, though she doesn't suggest this, it was copied from the United States.) On one level her writing can be seen as the most sensitive record we have of the various shifts in attitude—breaths, rather than winds, of change—as they have occurred in South Africa throughout the past forty or so years...