"Burger's Daughter" was generally well-received by critics. 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 this 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".