Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood

This is one of the few books where I’ll insist you “read” the audio version. Hearing Trevor Noah tell his own story will have you alternately laughing and crying as he recounts memories of Apartheid’s brutality in one breath and pooping on his kitchen floor the next, all the while switching effortlessly between one of the eight (!) languages he speaks. (I’m pretty sure my friends are sick of my telling them to go read/listen to this now.)

Disgrace

This dazzlingly well-written book by the Booker Prize winner deals with the complexities of life in post-Apartheid South Africa, where issues of race create a constant thrum and shifting dynamic. A disengaged, sensual (one might say predatory) college professor — who’s crossed a few lines but perversely refuses remorse — repairs from Cape Town to live with his estranged single daughter on a remote farm. There he’s faced with ironies of privilege and vulnerability, the drama of Apartheid. Events — there’s plot aplenty — unspool unexpectedly and shockingly in a kind of microcosm of a nation rising from its past — messy, haunting, moving. Repentance can be found, but you have to look for it, which is why this book grips you so hard. Uncomfortable and addicting. Could not put it down.

Long Walk to Freedom

Revolutionary. Prisoner. Leader. Nelson Mandela was all those things and so much, much more. The autobiography of his early life and 28 years in prison on the notorious Robben Island detail his struggle against apartheid and his subsequent rise to political power.