The book focuses on Noah's childhood growing up in his native South Africa after he was born of an illegal interracial relationship during the apartheid era.

[2] The book opens with young Noah being thrown out of a minibus by his mother because she thought the driver, a man from another South African tribe, was going to kill them.

Growing up in poverty, he finds independence by earning money from selling illegal bootleg CDs, first at school and later on the streets of the notorious neighborhood of Alexandra.

[3] When Noah is arrested while driving an unregistered car taken from Abel's workshop without permission, he describes his fear of doing time in prison, and his mother lays down the law about crime and punishment.

[8] U.S. senator Tammy Duckworth cited Born a Crime as the book that inspired her to write her 2021 memoir Every Day Is a Gift, in which she relates her experiences as the child of a white American father and a Thai mother.