Barbara by Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen (1939) is the classic Faroese novel — a love story set in 18th-century Tórshavn about a woman who cannot stop herself destroying her marriages. Jacobsen died of tuberculosis before finishing it, and his cousin William Heinesen completed the text. It has been translated into many languages and remains the most widely read work of Faroese fiction outside the islands.
The Old Man and His Sons by Heðin Brú (1940) depicts the collision between traditional Faroese fishing culture and modernity, with warmth and without sentimentality. A quiet masterpiece of a small literature.
Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? by Johan Harstad (2005, translated from Norwegian) is a novel in which a Norwegian man washes up in the Faroe Islands and works at a psychiatric care home. One of the few major contemporary novels set here, and it captures the landscape and light with real precision.
Faroe Islands by James Proctor (Bradt Travel Guides) is the standard English-language practical guide. Proctor knows the islands thoroughly; the Bradt guide is genuinely useful for planning.
The Faroe Islands: Interpretations of History by Jonathan Wylie (1987) is a thorough academic history — not light reading, but the best historical background available in English.
Far Afield by Susanna Kaysen (1990) is a novel set largely in the Faroe Islands, exploring outsider experience in an insular community with intelligence and dry humour.