Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

I was lent this book by a friend months and months ago <blush> and finally got around to reading it whilst on holiday last week.  Born a Crime follows the story of Trevor Noah's childhood, having been born as mixed race in South Africa during Apartheid.

The write-up says:

One of the comedy world's brightest new voices, Trevor Noah is a light-footed but sharp-minded observer of the absurdities of politics, race and identity, sharing jokes and insights drawn from the wealth of experience acquired in his relatively young life. As host of the US hit show The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, he provides viewers around the globe with their nightly dose of biting satire, but here Noah turns his focus inward, giving readers a deeply personal, heartfelt and humorous look at the world that shaped him.

Noah was born a crime, son of 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 first 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, take him away.

A collection of eighteen personal stories, Born a Crime tells the story of a mischievous young boy growing into a restless young man as he struggles to find his place in a world where he was never supposed to exist. Born a Crime is equally the story of that young man's fearless, rebellious and fervently religious mother - a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence and abuse that ultimately threatens her own life.
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, Noah illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and an unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a personal portrait of an unlikely childhood in a dangerous time, as moving and unforgettable as the very best memoirs and as funny as Noah's own hilarious stand-up. Born a Crime is a must read. 

The book is hugely funny and scary (because of it's truth) in equal measure. As someone who is privileged for growing white in the UK, it's shocking to read of what others grow up and experience as 'normal' in other parts of the world, within my lifetime.

The only criticism of this book I had, and it's just a personal thing, is that knowing him (ok, about him) as a stand-up now, I would like to have read about his transition from the teenager in South Africa getting up to high jinx to the popular comedian on prime time TV in the US.  That said, he could be purposely saving that for a sequel - I know I would want to read it.