Just thirty-eight-years-old, Anthony Keating's already survived both a divorce and a heart attack. He has left the BBC for the dangerous life of property speculation in the boom-and-bust 1970s, and is brooding on the oil crisis, galloping inflation and the slump in his grand house in the British countryside. His only stroke of good luck in an otherwise collapsing life is his new lover, the beautiful actress Alison Murray. But when Alison's daughter Jane is arrested while traveling in Eastern Europe, Alison rushes to try and save her, and Anthony soon follows and finds himself caught by the strife and hardships of the communist bloc. Set against a backdrop of the Cold War and the political turmoil that led England to Margaret Thatcher, The Ice Age tells the story of three people desperately seeking firm ground amidst chaos with Margaret Drabble's characteristically "high degree of intelligence and irony" (The New Yorker).