1. BORN A CRIME:STORIES FROM A SOUTH AFRICAN CHILDHOOD BY TREVOR NOAH

Trevor Noah is a South African Comedian from South Africa. Internationally, he is popularly known as a former host of an American late night show called “The Daily Show”. The book was published in 2016 and has 18 chapters. In the book, Trevor Noah narrates how his life was like growing up. He paints a detailed picture of how he experienced life as a coloured child during apartheid in South Africa. Just to clarify one detail, in South Africa a coloured person is someone who is of mixed race. When I enjoy a book, I struggle to put it down. And this is exactly what happened when I was reading “Born a crime” by Trevor Noah. I would highly recommend the book for young people who are interested in learning more about South African History in a casual setting.

The author tells us a story of how he was raised by his mother and close family members and the challenges he faced as a coloured child. Before reading the book, I had very limited knowledge of the challenges coloured people faced during apartheid. For example, there is a section whereby he talks about how he sometimes could not freely walk with his parents, and his mother would have to walk behind him and his father when the police were nearby. You can imagine how it must have felt like to not be able to freely  do something as simple as taking a walk with your family. The author narrates his childhood in a manner that is funny but yet very informative. The book flows and the language is easy to understand, there is no difficult  terminology. One thing I did not like about the book is it was unnecessarily long. There are chapters that could’ve been shorter, where the storyline was dragged for too long. Other than that, the book is a great read. If I were to rate the book, I would rate it 4 out of 5 stars.