Trevor Noah

Born to a Xhosa mother and a Swiss-German father in Johannesburg, Trevor Noah’s very existence as a mixed-race person was technically illegal until the end of South Africa’s white supremacist apartheid regime in 1994. Born a Crime covers his life until the beginning of his career in the early 2000s, following his close relationship with his beloved mother, his attempts to articulate his complex identity in a nation that still clung tightly to racial hierarchy, and his struggle to overcome the poverty and violence that surrounded him. After he finished high school, humor transformed from a means of coping with suffering to the foundation of his career: after a year DJing and selling CDs in the Johannesburg suburbs, he gained a substantial following in South Africa by hosting a youth radio show called Noah’s Ark and doing stand-up comedy. He hosted a number of major South African television shows and became one of the nation’s most prominent comedians before moving to the United States, where he was completely unknown, in 2011. By 2014, he landed a recurring role on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, then took over the hosting role in 2015, which propelled him to international fame. He currently lives in New York City.