Is there an audiobook of Born a Crime?

Yes. Born a Crime has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Trevor Noah.

How long is the Born a Crime audiobook?

The Born a Crime audiobook runs 8 hr 44 min.

Is Born a Crime on Kindle Unlimited?

No. Born a Crime was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on August 10, 2026.

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah book cover for the Book of the Day memoir book review

Our score

4.6/ 5

Outstanding

Listen to Born a Crime free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

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EDITION PUBLISHEDNovember 2016

Genres

Non-Fiction Memoir Coming Of Age

Themes

Race and identity under apartheidLanguage as survival and belongingA mother's love and willpowerPoverty, violence, and resourcefulness

Born a Crime

Name: Born a Crime
Price: 8.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah's memoir of growing up mixed-race in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa is funnier and stranger than its premise lets on. Eighteen linked essays turn a childhood spent partly in hiding into a sharp, generous portrait of language, survival, and one ferociously willful mother.

The Review

Our take

The title is not a metaphor. Under apartheid, a child born to a black mother and a white father was physical proof that a crime had been committed, and the early chapters of Noah's memoir carry that fact lightly enough to be funny and heavily enough to never let you forget it. He spent stretches of his childhood kept indoors, walked between relatives as if he belonged to no one, a boy who existed in a legal blind spot. What makes the book land is that Noah doesn't narrate this as tragedy. He narrates it as the absurd, dangerous, occasionally hilarious logic a kid simply accepts because it's the only world he has.

What I didn't expect was how much of the book is really about language. Noah grew up fluent in several of South Africa's tongues, and he's clear-eyed about how a switch in dialect could turn a stranger into kin or defuse a mugging mid-sentence. He uses that idea to open up the whole architecture of the country's divisions, showing how race, tribe, and class were enforced as much by what you could and couldn't say as by any law. It's the rare memoir that doubles as a genuinely useful education in a place most readers only half understand, and he delivers it without ever stopping to lecture.

The comedy is the delivery system, not the point. Noah has a stand-up's instinct for structure, and several of these essays build like bits, circling a small humiliation until it detonates into something larger. A botched attempt at teenage romance, a disastrous turn as a neighborhood DJ, the long con of selling pirated CDs in the townships, getting thrown from a moving minibus during what his mother insisted on calling a kidnapping. He knows exactly when to undercut a heavy moment with a joke and, more impressively, when to let the joke fall away and leave you with the thing underneath it.

Why you should read

Readers who like memoirs that teach without lecturing
Fans of comic writers with real depth underneath
Anyone curious about everyday life under and after apartheid
Readers drawn to fierce mother-and-son stories

What to expect

Eighteen linked essays rather than one continuous narrative
Comedy used to carry genuinely hard material
A vivid education in South African language and division
An ending that turns darker and more personal

The gravitational center, though, is his mother, Patricia. She is the book's real subject and its most fully drawn character: devout, stubborn, allergic to self-pity, willing to throw both her sons from a car if it meant escaping a worse fate. The relationship between them gives the collection its spine and, in its final movement, its weight, as the violence that shadows the early chapters arrives in full. One fair caveat: if you came hoping to learn how Noah went from Soweto to hosting an American late-night show, that story isn't here. This is the childhood, not the career, and the book ends well before the fame begins. Read on its own terms, it's a memoir that earns both its laughter and its ache, and it's stronger for keeping the spotlight on the woman who made the man possible rather than the man himself.

Reviewed by Ellis · How our reviews are written

Our verdict

4.6/ 5

Outstanding

Listen to Born a Crime free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Buy on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Prices may vary.

Where to read or listen

Is there an audiobook of Born a Crime?: Yes. Born a Crime has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Trevor Noah.
Listen to Born a Crime free with an Audible trial
We earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.
How long is the Born a Crime audiobook?: The Born a Crime audiobook runs 8 hr 44 min.
Is Born a Crime on Kindle Unlimited?: No. Born a Crime was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on August 10, 2026.
How much does Born a Crime cost?: On Amazon: Kindle $8.99, Paperback $9.59, Hardcover $14.99. Prices as of August 27, 2026 at 5:20 PM EDT and may change.

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Common questions

What is Born a Crime about?: The title is not a metaphor. Under apartheid, a child born to a black mother and a white father was physical proof that a crime had been committed, and the early chapters of Noah's memoir carry that fact lightly enough to be funny and heavily enough to never let you forget it. He spent stretches…
Is Born a Crime worth reading?: We scored Born a Crime 4.6 out of 5. Trevor Noah's memoir of growing up mixed-race in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa is funnier and stranger than its premise lets on. Eighteen linked essays turn a childhood spent partly in hiding into a sharp, generous portrait of language, survival, and one ferociously…