Durban - Trevor Noah will open up his personal story to the public later this year when he releases a book about growing up in South Africa.
Noah, riding a wave of popularity as the host of The Daily Show in the US, will be paid handsomely: the New York Daily News said he would earn $3 million (R49m) for the deal with publishers, Spiegel & Grau.
Soweto-born Noah, 31, is quoted as saying: “I couldn’t find a good book about myself so I decided to write one. And just like me, this book doesn’t have an appendix.”
Literary agent, Aoife Lennon-Ritchie, of The Lennon-Ritchie Agency, said the book was no surprise.
She said a similar deal had been signed with the creator of the HBO series, Girls, Lena Dunham, who received an advance of about $3.5m for her book, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s Learned.
Lennon-Ritchie said Noah’s book would sell “like hot cakes”.
In South Africa, the book will be published by Pan Macmillan.
In a statement, the publisher said the untitled book was “a collection of personal stories about growing up in South Africa during the last gasps of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that came with its demise”.
It will give insight into how he had to live on caterpillars during times of extreme poverty, to being thrown out of moving cars by gangsters, to spending time in jail.