Trevor Noah: “Born a Crime”
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
Michiko Kakutani, New York
Times • Newsday • Esquire • NPR
• Booklist
Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the
desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his
birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa
mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years
in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was
kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by
the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him
from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away.
Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white
rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure,
living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a
centuries-long struggle.
Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who
grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself
in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the
story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless,
rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman
determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence,
and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.
The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and
deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner
during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an
attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the
life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor
illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and
unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving
and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a
damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense
of humor and a mother’s unconventional, unconditional love.