"Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases" by Swedish writer Lars Gustafsson, was first published in Sweden in 1981. Translated into English in 1986, it appeared in Stories of Happy People (Norton, 1986; in print). It can also be found in You've Got to Read This: Contemporary Writers Introduce Stories That Held Them in Awe, edited by Ron Hansen (New York, 1994).

"Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases" is the story of a severely mentally retarded boy who is sent to an institution for the retarded, where he grows to manhood. The story covers a period from the 1930s to the late 1970s. Although set in Europe (possibly in Sweden, the country of Gustafsson's birth, although no specific country is identified), the story might equally well have been set in the United States. In a few short pages, it reveals a great deal about the inner life of a mentally retarded person and also much about the attitudes taken by society to the mentally retarded. On one level, it is a story of loneliness, isolation, and neglect, but on another level, it affirms the uniqueness and the dignity of the mentally retarded man, who against all odds creates an imaginative life for himself that allows him to feel in harmony with the larger forces at work in nature and the universe.