He was shot dead at 24. Two centuries later, Peru sings his songs.

Mariano Melgar (1790–1815) lends his name to streets, schools, an airport and a football club – yet outside Peru he is almost unknown. A seminarian who gave up the priesthood, a lover who became a poet, Melgar joined an insurgent army and met an early fate by firing squad.

Here, two distinguished figures of world literature bring his work into English for the first time. J. M. Coetzee and Valerie Miles present a selection of Melgar's poems, including his celebrated yaravís, an abridged “Letter to Silvia” – his legendary epistle of heartbreak – as well as a handful of fables that take aim at colonial exploitation.

Miles and Coetzee also contribute an essay each, as well as notes on their collaborative translation practice. Miles places Melgar among the volcanic landscape of Arequipa, the art of Goya and edification of Emerson, while Coetzee, with characteristic scholarly candour, weighs the myths against the young man at their centre.

The figure that emerges is neither statue nor martyr, but a bookish, mischievous, lovelorn young man who gave to revolution a language of tenderness, and paid for his beliefs with his life.