There are lots of books written by people - including me - who had a hard time growing up. You can’t be what you can’t see that is why it is so important that we show people their potential.I don't review a lot of books anymore, but this one got to me. But his mother empowers him to believe he can be something else, live somewhere different, feel, see, taste and experience an ‘other’. Had Noah only seen the confines of the walled ghettos his closest family were imprisoned in, his life today would be unimaginably different. What resonated with me most from this book was the reminder of the importance of someone showing you what is possible from life. Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? How much would you pay to save your own mother’s life?, he makes you wonder. These musings put you in his shoes, forcing you to examine your own mind.

He is honest not just about his actions, but his innermost thoughts. His use of language – particularly in the audiobook version where each character is brought to life with their own accent and dialect – paints the story in such vivid colour. From the stench of backed-up sewage to the disgusting squelch of a caterpillar bursting in your mouth when that’s all you can afford to eat. Noah doesn’t just talk about being poor, he makes you taste and smell and see it. Noah’s not climbing Everest or trekking to the poles, but he and his friends and family face the day-to-day terror of a police state, abuse, discrimination, hunger, imprisonment, crime, shootings. Set in apartheid South Africa and just beyond, this is a survival story in the realest sense. This book is insanely funny and full of absurd moments that make you go ‘wait, I need to read that again… seriously?!’. I cannot urge you enough to listen to it. Last night I finished listening to the audiobook version of Trevor Noah’s autobiography, Born a Crime. 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. 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 incisive wit and unflinching honesty. 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.

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.Ī collection of 18 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. 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. 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 listeners a deeply personal, heartfelt and humorous look at the world that shaped him. 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. The compelling, inspiring (often comic) coming-of-age story of Trevor Noah, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed. This is a sharply humorous, engaging and unforgettable record of Noah's life and at its heart, a love letter to his remarkable mother. An astonishing memoir that details growing up in the midst of a crumbling apartheid, it illuminates his unique vantage point and how it prepared him for a life in the public eye. Born a Crime is the deeply personal story of what has shaped Trevor Noah, South African comedian and host of the Daily Show.

Born a crime audiobook free