Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah was born in Johannesburg to a Black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father. Under apartheid, sex between people of different races was illegal, so his birth was itself a crime. He grew up mostly in Soweto, raised by his mother and grandmother.

He started doing stand-up comedy in South Africa in his early twenties. In 2014 he joined The Daily Show in the United States as a correspondent, and in 2015 he succeeded Jon Stewart as host. He left the show in 2022 and returned to touring and podcasting. He has also hosted the Grammy Awards several times.

Born a Crime (2016) is a memoir of his childhood in the last years of apartheid and the years after it. It shows how race decided where people could live and who they could be, and it gives much of its space to his devout, defiant mother, who survived being shot by his stepfather. It became a bestseller and was adapted for young readers.