Lotan was born in
Mandatory Palestine in 1935, the daughter of Dr. Binyamin Eliav Lubotzky (1909,
Riga – July 30, 1974,
Petah Tikva), an Israeli journalist and diplomat, a member of the
Revisionist Zionism movement and editor of the "
HaMashkif" newspaper, who became a member of the social democratic
Mapai party, just before the state was founded. She traveled with her parents to
Argentina on a mission from the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1953. A year later she went to study in London and lived in
Golders Green, where she married Maurice Stoppi, a Jewish-English engineer. In 1958, she moved with her husband to
Jamaica. In 1960 she published her first book,
The Other Eye, a novel written in English, and published in London by
Peter Davies publishing. The Ramla Magistrate's Court sentenced them to 18 months in prison, of which six months in practice. After hearing the sentence they stated that: ''"We did not expect such a punishment, this is a draconian verdict. We have never harmed state security. We have tried to promote peace and we're treated like criminals. We did not break the law, but held talks for the advancement of peace".'' Their appeal to the district court on the conviction and sentence was rejected, but on appeal to the Supreme Court, their sentence was reduced to a fine of NIS 1,000 each. Lotan was active in the "Campaign to Free Vanunu and for a Nuclear-free Middle East". and assisted
Mordechai Vanunu after his release from prison. On May 22, 2004, she conducted an interview with Vanunu for the
Sunday Times and the
BBC, to legally circumvent Vanunu's restrictions on speaking to foreign journalists. However, a few days later, the
Shin Bet arrested the British journalist
Peter Hounam, a reporter for the Sunday Times, and detained at the Ben-Gurion Airport a reporter for the BBC, Chris Mitchell, who made the film about Vanunu and confiscated the recordings. Lotan translated fiction and non-fiction from Hebrew into English, including the works of
Shlomo Sand,
Alona Kimchi,
Sami Michael,
Dorit Rabinyan, and
Gershon Shaked. Her translations from English to Hebrew are the books of
Patricia Cornwall and
Aldous Huxley. She died of
liver cancer on November 2, 2009, aged 74, in
Givatayim, Israel. == Published works ==