Obama's brother emerges in China with novel

By James Pomfret

GUANGZHOU, China (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama's half-brother made a rare appearance on Wednesday in southern China, his home for seven years, to launch a novel he says draws on his painful childhood under an abusive father.

Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo -- who had the same, late, father as the U.S. President -- has kept a low public profile since reports surfaced last year that he was living and working in the southern Chinese capitalist and manufacturing haven of Shenzhen, around an hour's train ride from Hong Kong.

After repeatedly shunning media attention, Ndesandjo's first major public appearance to launch his debut novel comes less than two weeks before the U.S. president 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 his adopted city of Shenzhen.

"I remember times in my house when I would hear screams and I would hear my mother's pain." His American mother Ruth was his father's third wife.

"My skin had turned hard emotionally for so many years because of what I'd seen my mother go through," said Ndesandjo, who is slim and bears an appearance similar to the president.

Ndesandjo's book details how the protagonist, David, made an improbable journey to China in 2001 just after the September 11th attacks, inspired by his "growing love for a beautiful Chinese woman and a young orphan", and reflects Ndesandjo's own marriage to a young Chinese woman and his charitable work for Chinese orphans.