Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

I like Trevor Noah. I randomly watched him a while ago and I thought he was really funny, so I watched some more and I really liked him, but I can't say I'm a fan. I don't follow him and I just found out he's hosting a show after I started reading this book. It's also unusual for me to read this book, I attempted reading memoirs before, but I couldn't get into them, so when I saw this book and thought 'yeah, I want to read that' it was uncharacteristic.

I was expecting, based on Trevor Noah's stand-up, to enjoy this book, but I was not expecting to find things I can relate to. I'm from the other side of the world so being able to relate to some aspects of life in South Africa was quite a surprise.

I liked the narration a lot, I didn't feel at any point that it was being made light of the situations or dramatising them, but simply relating things as they happened. I liked the format a lot too, various things that were properly told about later in the book were mentioned in earlier chapters, before we got the whole picture. I read this book the same way I would listen to someone tell me about their life and I think that was the intended way for this autobiography to be read.

I could go ahead and write about the things I liked, the ones I related to, the ones that made me sad, but then I would do this book no justice. 'Born a Crime' is an experience and I feel like finding out about what's in it by reading a review rather than picking up the book and reading it yourself takes away from how good reading it actually is.

The audiobook, narrated by Trevor Noah himself, is getting a lot of praise too and I agree. I listened to a bit of it and the narration is great, it also helps with unfamiliar words and names that I wouldn't know how to pronounce.

'Born a Crime' is a fantastic book and so worth picking up. Apart from Trevor Noah's life story (which, in a way, is a more his mother's story) we also get a good history lesson.