The speculation, extortion, intimidation and protection rackets that characterise Mafia activity were first practiced and perfected in the mid-nineteenth century among the citrus gardens of the Conca d'Oro

It's often assumed that this kind of organised crime was the ancient residue of feudal traditions that had evolved into something ugly among the most impoverished, isolated and backward inhabitants of Sicily. In reality many of the new mafiosi were aristocrats, and all of them were modern entrepreneurs who had become the most powerful landowners on the Conca d'Oro. The speculation, extortion, intimidation and protection rackets that characterise Mafia activity were first practiced and perfected in the mid-nineteenth century among the citrus gardens of the Conca d'Oro, though they continue to blight politics, hobble the economy and cripple the lives of the individuals on the island to this day. 

H. Attlee,  The land where lemons grow (2014), 69

Norman minds dissolved in the vapours of Muslim culture

The Norman conquest of Sicily turned into something of a scandal. Norman minds dissolved in the vapours of Muslim culture. Austere knights of Honfleur and Bayeux suddenly appeared in the streets of Palermo wearing flowing desert robes, and attracted to themselves harems of staggering diversity, while the Church raged. Norman pashas built their own alhambras. the Normans went Muslim with such remarkable style that even Muslim poets were soon praising the new Norman Xanadus.

John McPhee, quoted in H. Attlee,  The land where lemons grow (2014), 56

This is historical nonsense. John McPhee has clearly given no thought to the private lives of the Normans in Normandy. 

For over twenty-five centuries we’ve been bearing the weight of superb and heterogeneous civilisations

We Sicilians have become accustomed, by long, a very long hegemony of rulers who were not of our religion and did not speak our language, to split hairs. If we had not done so we’d never have coped with the Byzantine tax gatherers, with Berber Emirs, with Spanish Viceroys. Now the bent is endemic, we’re made like that. I said ‘support’, I did not say ‘participate’. 

... 

In Sicily it doesn‘t matter about doing things well or badly; the sin which we Sicilians never forgive is simply that of ‘doing’ at all. We are old, Chevalley, very old. For over twenty-five centuries we’ve been bearing the weight of superb and heterogeneous civilisations, all from outside, none made by ourselves, none that we could call own own. We’re as white as you are, Chevalley, and as the queen of England; and yet for two thousand five hundred years we’ve been a colony. I don’t say that in complaint; it’s our fault. But even so we’re worn our and exhausted.’

G. Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard (1958), tr. A. Colquhon (1961),122