Obama half-brother bares all

Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo, a half-brother of United States President Barack Obama, introduces his first novel, "Nairobi to Shenzhen," during a pre-launch news conference held by the American Chamber of Commerce in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou yesterday.

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UNITED States President Barack Obama's half-brother made a rare appearance yesterday in southern China, his home for seven years, to launch a novel he says draws on his childhood under an abusive father.

Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo - who had the same, late, father as the US president - has kept a low public profile since reports surfaced last year that he was living and working in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province.

After repeatedly shunning media attention, Ndesandjo's first major public appearance to launch his debut novel comes less than two weeks before President Obama travels to China for the first time.

While he said his work, "Nairobi to Shenzhen," is a fictional account, it started off nearly 10 years ago as an autobiography and "reflects many experiences in my own life as a child brought up in Kenya" including a troubled relationship with his father.

"My mother used to say of my father, 'he's a brilliant man but a social failure'," Ndesandjo told reporters at a press conference in Guangzhou, near Shenzhen.

"My father beat my mother and my father beat me, and you don't do that," said Ndesandjo, whose mother, Ruth Nidesand, was Barack Obama Sr's third wife.

Exchange student

Like his novel's main character, Ndesandjo had an American mother who is Jewish and who divorced his Kenyan father.

The novel, which went on sale yesterday by publishing company Aventine Press, is one of several books in the works by relatives of the US president.

President Obama's parents separated two years after he was born in Hawaii in 1961. The senior Obama, a Kenyan exchange student, divorced the president's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, in 1964 and had at least six other children in his native Kenya.

"I remember times in my house when I would hear screams and I would hear my mother's pain," said Ndesandjo who resembles the president.

The book reflects Ndesandjo's own marriage to a young Chinese woman and his charitable work for Chinese orphans.

He was less forthright about his relationship with his famous half-brother, however, saying that they were in touch.

"We're family - I love my family," said Ndesandjo, who wore a burgundy bandana and professes a love for the piano, Chinese calligraphy and classic Chinese literature.

At the news conference he avoided any mention of politics or China-US relations but said Americans could learn from China's culture and deep-rooted family ties.

"China is about family," he said. "There is a tremendous, wonderful sense of family here."

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