President Obama’s half brother has broken his media silence and come forward to discuss his new semi-autobiographical novel of the abusive father he shares with the nation’s first African-American president.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Mark Ndesandjo said he wrote “Nairobi to Shenzhen” in part to raise awareness of domestic violence. “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. “It’s something which I think affected me for a long time, and it’s something that I’ve just recently come to terms with.”
Like the fictional main character in the novel, Ndesandjo also had a Jewish American mother who divorced his Kenyan father. Ndesandjo, who is a accomplished pianist, has been living for the past seven years in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, and has refused all interview requests until now. He is scheduled to meet with his half brother when President Obama visits China this month. The book goes on sale next Wednesday.
