Opinion

A Los Angeles Times correspondent describes the slim build, the loping gait and the high-set cheekbones that give Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo a striking resemblance to his more famous half-brother.

Obama Ndesandjo, a 43-year-old businessman and musician, who sports a shaved head and wears a gold stud in his left earlobe, has lived in southern China for seven years and for the past year has assiduously avoided the public gaze, we learned this week.

But on Wednesday he came out to publicise an autobiographical novel, From Nairobi to Shenzhen, which supposedly follows Ndesandjo's peripatetic life. He was born in Kenya, the son of Barack Obama Sr, the same father as the president, and his father's third wife, Ruth Nidesand, the daughter of Jewish Lithuanian immigrants.

The couple later divorced and Ndesandjo moved to the US, earning degrees in physics from Brown and Stanford universities, and an MBA from Emory University. The LA Times reports that he last year married a Chinese woman from Henan province.

Like Obama's memoir, Dreams From My Father, Ndesandjo's book delves into growing up as a mixed-race child with a psyche shaped by an erratic father.

"My father beat my mother, and my father beat me," Ndesandjo said in an interview released on Wednesday.

"I remember situations when I was growing up, and there would be a light coming from our living room, and I could hear thuds and screams, and my father's voice and my mother shouting."

At a news conference in Guangzhou, organised by the US Chamber of Commerce for Southern China, Ndesandjo said it had taken a long time before he became "proud to be an Obama".

He said he had written the book, in part, to exorcise the bad memories of his childhood and to publicise the problem of domestic violence. He said he planned to donate 15 percent of the proceeds of sales of the book (published by Aventine Press, a self-publishing company based in San Diego) to a charity for children.

The LA Times reports that since moving to China in 2002, Ndesandjo has worked as business consultant in Shenzhen. He is also a partner with a Chinese friend in a small chain of restaurants called Cabin BBQ.

A classical and jazz pianist, Ndesandjo also teaches piano as a volunteer in an orphanage. Although strictly autobiographical, the novel skips over the part where the protagonist's half-brother is elected president of the United States.

"I didn't want to take on any strong political themes in this book," Ndesandjo said. The only thing he added about the president: "I think my brother's team is doing an extraordinary job."

Barack Obama Sr died in 1982, and the half-brothers did not know each other as children. They have met only a few times as adults. Ndesandjo attended the inauguration and said he expected to meet the president during his trip to China later this month and to introduce him to his wife.

He also expressed a willingness to pass on some advice gleaned from seven years in China.

"I would encourage not only my brother, President Obama, but also American people, (to understand) that China is about family.

"Family is always a recurrent theme here," he said.