In this Feb. 5, 2008 file photo, a photograph of Barack Obama Sr., father of Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., hangs on the wall of his grandmother Sarah Hussein Obama's house in the village of Kogelo, near the shores of Lake Victoria, Kenya. AP Photo
In his first interview, Mark Ndesandjo told The Associated Press that 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 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 Wednesday by the self-publishing company Aventine Press, is one of several books in the works by relatives of the 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.
For the past seven years, Ndesandjo has been living in the booming southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, and has refused all interview requests until now.
Ndesandjo, who said he attended Obama's inauguration as a family guest, declined to discuss his earliest memories of the president or describe their relationship over the years. However, he said he plans to meet his brother in Beijing when the president makes his first visit to China on Nov. 15-18.
"My plan is to introduce my wife to him. She is his biggest fan," he said. Shortly after divorcing the president's mother, Obama Sr. met Nidesand while studying as a graduate student at Harvard University. Nidesand returned with Obama Sr. to his native Kenya in 1965, where Mark and his brother David were born and grew up. David later died in a motorcycle accident.
