Originally published in Dutch as De Belofte earlier in 2026, this is the full English translation of Marvin Hokstam Baapoure’s debut mini novel — a story about diaspora, memory, and how far back love and belonging really reach. Read in one sitting, it stays with you far longer than that.
The Promise follows that broken vow across five generations: from an Igbo kingdom before colonization, to a plantation on Suriname’s Commewijne river, to one unsuspecting summer in Amsterdam — where a young woman from St. Maarten and a Surinamese-Dutch man fall into something that feels like far more than coincidence.
A literary mini novel about diaspora, memory, and how far back love and belonging really reach. Read in one sitting, it stays with you far longer than that.A compact, character-driven story that moves fast without losing depth. Rooted in real history, the transatlantic slave trade, Dutch colonial Suriname, and the diaspora communities that carry that history today. Written by a journalist and storyteller with decades of reporting from the Caribbean and the Netherlands.
About the author: Marvin Hokstam Baapoure is a Suriname-born journalist, writer and speaker who has worked across the Caribbean, the Netherlands, and beyond. The Promise is self-published under his company HOX Projects.
