Her website proudly explains how she 'evidently lives by the liberal mores she advocates': she has been married four times - with the Jong part of her name coming from her third marriage - and her current husband is a divorce lawyer. Given how the story blurred fiction with autobiography, Jong said the experience of such criticism 'was very stressful at the beginning, and in order to survive I developed a sense of humour about it'. American writer Paul Theroux referred to the character of Wing as a 'mammoth pudenda'. When 'Fear of Flying' turned 20 in 1993, she wrote that her aim had been to give a 'rallying cry for women who wanted the right to have fantasies as rich and raunchy as those of men'. 'I have learned from my journey that we are absolutely not equal yet.' 'I have come to understand what it's like to be a woman writer in a world in which women are still looked at as breasts and pussies,' the typically blunt New York-born author said. The difference in the way she was treated, she says, smacked of an inequality that continues to this day. Jong says she had wanted to explore sex in the way Philip Roth and John Updike had done - but from a female mindset. In the book, Wing rages that 'men have always defined femininity as a means of keeping women in line'. In 1973, such uninhibited sexual frankness and liberal swearing from a female perspective caused a stir in the publishing world. The story of Isadora Wing, who is five years into her second marriage to a psychiatrist but laments that sex with him now brings 'no thrill to the tastebuds, no bittersweet edge, no danger', struck a chord with millions. 'I think that's what writers are made to do - we're the earthworms, we aerate the soil.

'Some people hate it, some people love it,' she said of her debut novel. 'You can tell when a book matters when people argue about it,' the 71-year-old author and ardent feminist told AFP in an interview.

But reaction to it also illustrated that the inside of a woman's head - at least as Jong saw it - could be a polarising place. The book, which is set for an anniversary re-release this year, became a sensation in 1973 and went on to shift more than 20 million copies in 40 different languages.

HONG KONG - In her own words, Erica Jong wanted to 'slice open a woman's head and show everything happening inside' when she wrote her debut novel 'Fear of Flying', first published 40 years ago.

Isadora wing novel