Our father was abusive: Obama's half-brother

US President Barack Obama's half brother has broken his media silence to discuss his new novel the semi-autobiographical story of an abusive parent patterned on their late father, the mostly absent figure Obama wrote about in his own memoir.

US President Barack Obama's half brother has broken his media silence to discuss his new novel the semi-autobiographical story of an abusive parent patterned on their late father, the mostly absent figure Obama wrote about in his own memoir.

In his first interview, 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."

Breaking His Silence: Mark Ndesandjo had refused all interview requests until now.

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, is one of several books in the works by relatives of
the president.

Parents separated

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 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 November 15-18.

"My plan is to introduce my wife to him. She is his biggest fan," he said.

Only meeting

President Obama saw his father only once after his parents' divorce, when he was 10 years old. In a best-selling memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama wrote about his fatherless upbringing and search for identity.