Customer Reviews

Nairobi To Shenzhen: A Novel of Love in the East

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Mark Ndesandjo has not had an easy life. Mark started his young years in Kenya where he was beaten by his late father,Barack Obama. Mark also wanted to protect his Mum from this brutal man but as a small child he felt helpless. As an adult some of his experiences made him passionate about helping suffering children. Mark currently helps orphans in China, dedicating much of his life to giving these children some hope and a direction (he teaches them piano for example). Mark is a brilliant piano player and due to his need to escape the horrors of his young life, he immersed himself into music, literature and physics. Mark turned his negative past experiences and channeled them into a positive future. He will continue to reach out and send the world the message that domestic violance will not be tolerated and that everyone should help out people in need. Mark also sends a message that there is always hope when you have a passion.This book was written so magically bringing this semi autobiographical novel into a true work of art. Very interesting novel that is hard to stop reading!! I almost forgot,Mark shares the same father as his famous brother, President Barack Obama!

I expected flawless grammar and sophisticated structure from this half-brother of our Barack Obama, who is so articulate and uses the English language nearly flawlessly. However, there are so many problems with the writing in this novel as to almost keep me from reading the second half. Introductory phrases are not followed by commas, so the meanings of many sentences are confusing, and I have to re-read many sentences in order to realize their meaning. There are missing periods, extra periods, missing commas, extra commas, misspelled words, missing words, duplicated words, weird speaker tags, missing speaker tags so that one gets lost and doesn't know who is speaking in a conversation. Weirdly, the font size will change now and then for no apparent reason. And quotation marks seem to be inserted haphazardly, so the reader is never certain when a piece of dialogue has ended or is being spoken by someone else.

Point of view is something that Mr. Ndesandjo apparently has never heard of before. As readers, we are drawn to HIS point of view. It is the one we care about. Yet, as author, he swings the reader wildly from his own POV to that of almost every character in the book, leaving the reader feeling jerked about and cheated, because just as we feel an intimate connection with the author as protagonist, we are suddenly thrust into the mind of a minor character we don't particularly care about and sent off to ponder this person's childhood. Very annoying.

Mr. Ndesandjo goes off on many tangents that have caused me, now at the halfway point, to begin skimming sections in order to get to the meat of the story.

On the positive side, his descriptions of Chinese culture, the people, their values, the physical attributes of their faces, their buildings, their orphanages, their food, and their language, are quite lovely. It is what is keeping me reading.

Child abuse is an old, worn-out topic that shouldn't surprise anyone anymore, but that does not seem to be the purpose of this novel. Its purpose seems to be an expose of life in China, and I do appreciate that.

But the punctuation, oy! What publisher would allow such non-proof-read material to be printed? I don't understand and can only imagine that they and Ndesandjo himself are embarrassed at the huge number of errors. Commas and periods are like traffic signals that tell us when to pause, when to stop, when to go on. As a musician, I can't imagine that Ndesandjo would tolerate an eighth-note rest where a quarter-note rest belongs or a half note where three quarter notes belong. I am amazed and disappointed by this lack of professionalism, and I imagine his half-brother is too. Yet, the good stuff IS good.

Truly speaking, I could not even get into this book beyond the first few pages as it was so muddled and scattered here and there. Poetic references that took you nowhere and distracted the reader from any kind of flow to his story. I tried to scan other chapters to see if this literary trend continued, but could find no clarity or flow in any of them. In short, the only thing that was comprehensible and impactful was the author's telling of his early childhood and how he and his mother suffered physical and emotional abuse from his abusive father, Barak Obama, Sr. In spite of the fact that the author tried to detach himself from this part of his life, his pain and suffering came through and it left you wondering why his mother, an educated American woman, would have allowed this to continue for as long as it did. Having said that, I would not recommend this book to anyone - certainly not to purchase it as I believe it is a waste of money. Sadly, the libraries that I checked out did not even keep the book and after perusing it I could see why they made that choice. I wish good things for the author and hope that his life continues to get better and better and that he can erase the bad memories from his early life from his mind and being.

Yes, I admit I did buy this book because of the relation between Mr. Ndesanjo and President Obama. However, what kept me reading was the fact that the story and the characters truly touched me. Mr. Ndesanjo's ability to put into words such deep-felt emotions and observations is truly a gift. I often found myself reading a passage about love or memories or relationships and nodding my head; he nailed so many of the emotions that people experience when they are searching for something in life. The passages about young Zhen Rui were inspiring and heartbreaking at the same time. I also appreciated the stream-of-conciousness style, and gliding from one character's mind to another. It gives the story a sense of universality; and, in being given the opportunity to "see" the thoughts of those who are not the central character, we are given a much more objective glance at the world Mr. Ndesanjo is building as a whole. I agree that the book could use a second edition with major edits, and this is why I rated it with four, instead of five, stars. There were several editorial oversights. On the other hand, it was insightful at those moments where the writer would accidentally fall out of the third person and into the first person. I would think to myself, "Oh, guess this is one of those 'actual persons and events' he references in the Forward." All in all, however this is a very honest, moving novel and I recommend reading it.

Several years ago, I heard about Mark, the author, from Shenzhen local newspaper about his story.He has been a volunteer of an orphanage for years.

Later, when Barack Obama became the president of USA, newspapers told me that his half brother Mark lives in Shenzhen. Oh, the same guy!

From Obama's book "Dreams from My Father", I read something about Mark. They share a big family.

President Obama is chasing his father's dream. Now, what is his younger brother seeking?

We are living in a complex world. So many tough problems are waiting for us. What should we do?

I believe that we could find out something from this book.

That's a book I wanted to read and when I started it I could not find any decent rhythm with it. I attribute that to the fact that the main character of what is announced as a novel is in fact the author. We never know where the limit between the novel and the autobiographical tale lies. This ambiguity is bothering because we do not listen to a personal tale told by the main person concerned in the same way as we would read the tale of someone absolutely fictitious. And the fictitious evades me completely. Then the characters becoming real the story is not a story but some kind of report about some experience in China by one male African, whose mother is Jewish, whose father is Kenyan, who has lived and worked in both Kenya and the US, though many details are missing, who comes to Shenzhen with beautiful intentions about discovering China, the Chinese, helping children who need some help (he will choose orphans in an orphanage), and just experiencing the foreign world into which he is throwing himself. He tries to teach the piano to the orphans while he is teaching English to an expensive school for children who can pay the fees, hence the middle and upper middle class of Shenzhen. But we do not get any information about what he was really doing in the US and what his qualification as for music and piano playing, not to mention piano teaching, are. We are kept in the blue as for these details, thus background of the character. That fuzziness is slowing down the reading. We constantly wonder why he does this or that, what his motivations and qualifications are. Then he spends a lot of time and energy explaining the little details and harassment he gets in Shenzhen because he is foreign, because he is American, because he is black and that leaves a strange taste on the side of the Chinese of unhealthy curiosity and maybe racism. But this impression comes from the fact that the main character who is telling his story is also imagining the motivations of the people he meets not as his own phantasms or cogitations but in a tone that seems to mean it is the truth. But how can he know? Finally the rhythm of the tale is too slow, by far too slow and many details are superfluous. That made the book disappointing. I think it would have been better and more effective to make it a plain report, or to make it a true novel, but not that in-between genre of a fictional journey report.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

I looked forward to reading this book and once I got it I opened it right away to read. I think I got halfway through the book and have been unable to go any further. This book is just not engaging. I read a lot of books, subject matter, but six months down the line I still have not finished reading it and may just have to donate it or something. What is there to say?

I could not put the book down! The story grabbed hold of me immediately taking me to China, and into David's life there. The plot cannot be condensed into one theme, for it encompasses many themes not just domestic violence or volunteerism, but its also a love story. It is also a story about a struggle- to survive, to find meaning- as we see in the case of David and even in his father, as revealed by his diary entries.

Mark presents us with an honest story, it is real and his attention to detail and succinct description of events and incidents makes them come alive for us. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, and cant wait for another from this author. Great job!

I never heard of Mark Obama until this book was published. Granted that we live in a capitalistic society, Mr. Mark Obama is fully entitled to exploit his fifteen minutes of fame and cash in on his half-brother's world status.

Nothing wrong with this, except that he chooses the bashing of his father as the subject of his literature. One does not condone family violence, but Mark Obama's experience is far from unique, and does not deserve publication as a book. For all we know it is a one-sided story, since Barack Obama Sr is not here to defend himself, and Mark's story has not been corroborated by anyone else. But let us assume his account to be factual for the purpose of this critique.

One needs to understand the era and culture where Mark was raised. Other cultures believe in stricter child discipline than the Western culture, thus, because of these environmental differences we do not judge traditions of one culture by the standards of another. Even in the West, corporal punishment was far more acceptable a generation ago when Mark was growing up. Most Kenyans would bear witness that what Mark Obama describes as child abuse is nothing but a compliance with the belief that "you spare the rod to spoil the child". And Kenyan kids are just fine. In Kansas City today, Barack Obama Sr would be in trouble if he disciplined his son by whooping, but he did what he needed to do in Nairobi in the 60's and 70's.

This whole idea of characterizing Obama Sr as the worst father ever is disgusting. He was wrong if he beat his wife, but the event does not merit world-wide publication. For, no family is perfect and the world of literature would be ignominious if every person was to tell their family secrets in a book.

Finally, a middle-aged man alleging child abuse as a reason to explain away current failures and struggles is just not an issue worthy of attention. Most likely, Obama Jr's real issue is less of abuse but more of identity crises, shame and embarrassment over his African heritage. It is a fact that some people of Caucasian and black African parentage sometimes feel this way. Barack Obama the president has proven that this need not be the case.

I heard about the author while in China, and this book as well. Mark Obama , Barac Obama's half brother , lost his job after 911 recession ,then come to shenzhen, married a Chines woman from my province.

I guess Mark Obama is a guy suffered a lot of children abuse from his parent when young ...

Nairobe Kenya is such a miserable place , the world should help Africa now by action not words.

anyway , give a pre mark 5!

Waiting for it!

Good luck Mark Obama.

ENjoy your stay in Shenzhen. God bless you !