Set in a quasi-Russian dreamscape, the blackly comic, darkly beautiful poems and fables contained in this vast volume chronicle, in an elaborate symphonic arrangement of recurring themes and motifs, the miscellaneous travails of several interacting characters--ballerina, chess master, opera tenor, cabaret chanteuse (if not, too, the odd street urchin, idiot, or organ grinder)--all under the vigilant glare of the gleefully belligerent, aggressively indecorous Petrushka puppet thwacking away savagely at his various adversaries with his belovèd slapstick. By turns elegant, satirical, and absurd, the collection, like its namesake, revels throughout in the perverse and grotesque, yet always with mischievous wit and rhetorical invention.

Petrushka (entry from book's glossary):

Legendary jester antihero of Russian folk puppetry tradition, distinguished by his penchants for anarchic violence and subversive humor. His name was a homonym for 'parsley' but derived from Pyotr, the human trickster of yore. Typically, he had a crooked nose and humped back, sported a red skirt and cap, and wielded a slapstick during his various interludes with policeman, doctor, soldier, or priest--if not the very devil (or house elf) himself--before dragged off howling by dogs. His voice, a grating squeak, was produced by a tiny whistle (or 'pishchik') lodged in the puppeteer's throat. Stravinsky composed a celebrated ballet on the subject, in which the notorious mischief-maker vies for the attention of his belovèd ballerina with his rival, the Moor, but to no avail--that is, until the achievement of his menacing, posthumous revenge.