This is the story of two societies at the point of collapse: an England clinging desperately to the wreckage of its history and Beirut under bombardment. Adam Murray, a young British journalist, returns from assignment in the Middle East to find his old world has disintegrated. Stunned and embittered by the change in his friends, and their aimless world of chatter and heroin, he is persuaded by a mysterious patron to return to the city he loves, now under siege by the Israeli army.