“I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I think my liver is diseased.”
These are the opening lines of:

The correct option is Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground.

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1864 novella, Notes from Underground, begins with these famous words spoken by the unnamed protagonist, commonly referred to as the Underground Man. The lines, "I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I think my liver is diseased," serve to immediately establish the narrator’s self-loathing, social alienation, and highly contradictory psychological state.

This opening monologue introduces the core themes of the novella, which is widely considered to be one of the first existentialist works in literature. The narrator's refusal to seek medical help for his diseased liver out of spite highlights his rebellion against rationalism, science, and the idea of self-preservation.

Here is why the other options are incorrect:
- Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera begins with: "It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love."
- Albert Camus’s The Plague begins with: "The unusual events that are the subject of this chronicle occurred in 194- at Oran."
- Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year begins with: "It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, among the rest of my neighbours, heard in ordinary discourse that the plague was returned again in Holland..."