Book

Race relations

The Daily Show host Trevor Noah's best-selling memoir has earned glowing reviews not because it is funny. In fact, it is much less funny than one might expect from a comedian. The story of Noah, born as the son of a black woman and a white man in the era of apartheid, is compelling without any pratfalls. The book also explains what we can look on now as absurd laws about race in South Africa as recently as the 1980s. For instance, declaring the race of an individual could be up to a clerk at a government office. The languages are the reason this book is best consumed as an audiobook. The portions of the book that are not in English don't have the same texture or impact without Noah's narration.