Displacement and alienation are regular themes in Manning's books. Characters are often isolated, physically and emotionally removed from family and familiar contexts and seeking a place to belong. This crisis of identity may reflect that of Manning herself as the daughter of an Irish mother and a British naval officer. "I'm really confused about what I am, never really feeling that I belong in either place", she told an interviewer in 1969. In Manning's war fiction, conflict creates additional anxiety, emotional displacement and distance, with characters unable to communicate with each other. Eve Patten notes the "pervasive sense of liminality" and the recurrent figure of the refugee in Manning's work. Early literary interest in displacement was reinforced by Manning's own terrifying and disorientating experiences as a refugee during the war. Her travels also brought her into direct contact with the far worse plight of other war refugees, including Jewish asylum-seekers who were leaving Romania aboard the "Struma". Exile had its rewards for literary refugees such as Manning, offering exposure to different cultures and "the sense of a greater, past civilisation", as she described in her 1944 review of British poetry. Her writing reflects her deep concern for the realities of most refugees, who are portrayed as "a degraded and demoralised Other", challenging complacent Western notions of stability and nationality.