I am not a huge fan of Trevor Noah as a comedian, but after reading his coming-of-age story, Born a Crime, it won’t be remiss to say I’m a fan of his writing.

Born a Crime is a spellbinding tale about Trevor’s childhood years growing up in Apartheid and post-Apartheid South Africa, but it is as much a tale of his mother as it is of him. Having not read a lot about South Africa or Apartheid, I found the narration riveting, funny, crazy, and touching.

Trevor takes us through a childhood where he deals with questions which even adults of today find difficult to reconcile - racism, domestic abuse, impacts of colonialism, religion, poverty, prison, and much more.

But through it all, he manages to keep his wit and enthusiasm for life alive. Trevors' mother’s influence on him is tremendous as she struggles to give him all the opportunities she never had growing up.

He takes us through his growing up in different racial communities, his ability to fit in and at the same time be an outcast in any group, his adventures with his friends, his entrepreneurial spirit which even saves his life, his heartbreaks, and most of all his innate desire to understand life around him as he sees it.

Trevor himself touches upon the aspect of how little people know about life under Apartheid, and ironically, how the West takes precedence even in the worst atrocities known to man. He challenges the notion of the Holocaust being considered the biggest evil in humanity and claims that its because the Nazis documented their crime, while the rest of the world including Africa suffered equivalent, if not more but the vagueness in the magnitude of suffering makes people feel it was a lesser crime.

Many a time, due to language, race, or other uncertainties, we see Trevor in situations not knowing where the next meal is going to come from or what the future is going to be like. His ability to adapt, survive, and thrive in the circumstances and succeed while continuing to wonder why his fiercely independent mother refused to leave his abusive step-father makes for a fascinating read.

This book will make you laugh out loud and misty-eyed. I doubt there are many books which can tell the tale of growing up in Apartheid South Africa in a better way.

Originally published here.