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When the young South African comedian Trevor Noah took the stage on The Tonight Show earlier this year to deliver a five-minute set, Jay Leno and guest Glenn Close could be seen roaring in the background, echoing the studio audience that was eating out of Noah's hand. It was a big moment: for the first time, an African comedian had taken the mic on stand-up comedy's biggest traditional showcase, and he'd killed. Back home, sub-Saharan newspapers trumpeted Noah's appearance as if it were breaking news, and MSNBC Africa rebroadcast the show across the continent.
Noah--just 28, handsome, thoughtful, and very funny--is already a huge deal in South Africa. In a few short years, he's risen from amateur clubs to being a headliner capable of selling out large theaters for his one-man shows. All this, in a nation where stand-up comedy is still a maturing art. Noah's DVDs are bestsellers, and he's already had a run as a talk-show host. When a clip of his routine ridiculing South Africa's abysmal phone service went up on YouTube, the CEO of a local mobile provider took out a full-page ad in Jo'burg's Sunday Times to apologize to Noah directly--and then hired him as a pitchman.
Not that Noah always sticks to What's-with-cellphones-these-days? material. His comedy is political, trenchant, delivered in an easy style that probes sensitive subject matter without being overtly confrontational. This is perhaps what's made him so appealing despite South Africa's fraught racial landscape, which is often more complicated and rawer than America's own....