WASSCE Literature in English: The Prescribed Texts for 2026 to 2030

The Prescribed Text List for 2026 to 2030

The list below is the harmonised selection in force for the West African Senior School Certificate Examination from 2026 through 2030. Candidates are examined on all of it: the Shakespeare text is tested by objective context questions in Paper 1, prose is tested by essay in Paper 2, and drama and poetry are tested by essay in Paper 3.

• Shakespearean drama: Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare.
• African prose: So the Path Does Not Die by Pede Hollist, and Redemption Road by Elma Shaw.
• Non-African prose: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and Path of Lucas: The Journey He Endured by Susanne Bellefeuille.
• African drama: Once Upon an Elephant by Bosede Ademilua-Afolayan, and The Marriage of Anansewa by Efua Sutherland.
• Non-African drama: An Inspector Calls by J. B. Priestley, and A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt.
• African poetry: Once Upon a Time by Gabriel Okara; New Tongue by Elizabeth L. A. Kamara; Night by Wole Soyinka; Not My Business by Niyi Osundare; Hearty Garlands by S. O. H. Afriyie-Vidza; and The Breast of the Sea by Syl Cheney-Coker.
• Non-African poetry: The Stone by Wilfred Wilson Gibson; She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron; The Nun's Priest's Tale, in a shortened form, by Geoffrey Chaucer; Digging by Seamus Heaney; Still I Rise by Maya Angelou; and The Telephone Call by Fleur Adcock.

How the Papers Are Structured

Literature in English is examined in three papers. Paper 1 is objective and is the only paper in which the Shakespeare text and unseen passages appear. Papers 2 and 3 are essay papers on the prescribed texts, and in every section you are given a choice of two questions and must answer one.

• Paper 1 lasts one hour and carries 50 marks. It has 20 questions on general knowledge of literature, 5 on an unseen prose passage, 5 on an unseen poem, and 20 context questions on the Shakespeare text.
• Paper 2 lasts one hour and fifteen minutes and carries 50 marks. Section A is African prose and Section B is non-African prose, with two essay questions in each section from which you answer one.
• Paper 3 lasts two hours and thirty minutes and carries 100 marks. Section A is African drama, Section B non-African drama, Section C African poetry and Section D non-African poetry, and you answer one question from each of the four sections.
• Because Paper 3 carries the most marks and demands four essays, timing practice matters more there than anywhere else. Budget roughly thirty-five minutes per essay and leave time to plan.
• The general knowledge questions in Paper 1 test literary terms, genres, figures of speech and dramatic and poetic forms rather than the set texts, so they can be revised independently.
• An essay answer is marked on content, organisation, expression and mechanical accuracy. Quoting briefly and accurately from the text raises the content mark; retelling the story without argument lowers it.

The Prose and Drama Texts

Each prescribed text should be revised under the same five headings: plot, setting, characters, themes and style. The summaries below give the spine of each work so that your revision has something to hang on.

• So the Path Does Not Die, by the Sierra Leonean writer Pede Hollist, follows Finaba Marah, called Fina. Her story begins on the night of her interrupted circumcision, continues through her girlhood in Freetown and her twenties in the Washington area of the United States, and ends with her return to Sierra Leone to work for war-traumatised children. Themes: female genital cutting and bodily autonomy, belonging and exile, family duty, and the cost of war.
• Redemption Road, by the Liberian writer Elma Shaw, is set in the aftermath of the Liberian civil war. Bendu Lewis, co-director of a peace-building organisation, is haunted by the killing of her brother Benji and by her own wartime experience, and is drawn into a confrontation with the former warlord known as Commander Cobra. Themes: trauma and memory, justice against forgiveness, reconciliation, and the rebuilding of a broken country.
• To Kill a Mockingbird, by the American writer Harper Lee, is narrated by Jean Louise Finch, called Scout, in the town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression. Her father Atticus Finch defends Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of raping Mayella Ewell, and the children's fear of their reclusive neighbour Boo Radley runs beside the trial. Themes: racial injustice, moral courage, the education of a child, and the destruction of innocence.
• Path of Lucas: The Journey He Endured, by the Canadian writer Susanne Bellefeuille, is a life story told by a daughter about her father, Lucas Clarkson, a farmer's son and family man in Canada from the 1950s onward, who must choose between his own ambitions and holding his family together. Themes: family loyalty, faith, endurance and purpose.
• Once Upon an Elephant, by the Nigerian dramatist Bosede Ademilua-Afolayan, is set in an unnamed Yoruba community. The kingmaker Serubawon bribes his colleagues to place Ajanaku, a younger son of the late King Akinjobi, on the throne, and Ajanaku rules as a tyrant until the oppressed, among them Iya Agba, Desola, Odekunle and Delani, unite against him. Themes: abuse of power, corrupt kingmaking, the betrayal of tradition, and the recovery of the people's voice.
• The Marriage of Anansewa, by the Ghanaian dramatist Efua Sutherland, is a comedy in the anansesem storytelling tradition. Ananse promises his daughter Anansewa to four chiefs at once in order to collect gifts from all of them, and must then stage her death to escape the trap he has made. Themes: greed and survival, wit against wealth, the marriage market, and the theatre of the storyteller.
• An Inspector Calls, by the English writer J. B. Priestley, is set in 1912 in the Birling household. Inspector Goole interrogates each family member about the suicide of Eva Smith and shows that all of them share responsibility for her death. Themes: social responsibility, class and privilege, the exploitation of women workers, and the contrast between the older and younger generations.
• A Man for All Seasons, by the English writer Robert Bolt, dramatises the last years of Sir Thomas More, who refuses to swear the oath acknowledging Henry the Eighth as head of the Church of England and is convicted on the perjured evidence of Richard Rich. The Common Man moves in and out of the action as narrator and minor characters. Themes: conscience against expediency, the individual and the state, silence as a legal defence, and the corruption of ambition.
• Antony and Cleopatra, by Shakespeare, sets the Roman general Mark Antony between his duty in Rome, where Octavius Caesar and Lepidus complete the triumvirate, and his love for Cleopatra in Egypt. Antony's political marriage to Octavia collapses, he is defeated at the sea battle of Actium, and both lovers take their own lives. Themes: love against duty, Rome against Egypt, the loss of honour, and the theatricality of greatness.

The Poetry Selection

Twelve poems are prescribed, six African and six non-African, and each section of Paper 3 that deals with poetry expects a close reading rather than a paraphrase. Learn for each poem the subject, the speaker, the structure, two or three dominant devices and one memorable line.

• Once Upon a Time, by the Nigerian poet Gabriel Okara, is a father's address to his son, contrasting the sincere greetings of the past with the false, rehearsed faces of modern society, and asking to be taught again how to laugh honestly. Devices: repetition, contrast, and the imagery of faces and masks.
• New Tongue, by the Sierra Leonean poet Elizabeth L. A. Kamara, treats language, voice and the finding of new expression.
• Night, by the Nigerian poet and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, addresses night as a sensuous and threatening female presence that unsettles the speaker. Devices: personification, tactile imagery and apostrophe.
• Not My Business, by the Nigerian poet Niyi Osundare, records the abduction and abuse of neighbours under a brutal regime while the speaker repeats that it is not his business, until the soldiers come for him too. Devices: refrain, irony and dramatic reversal.
• Hearty Garlands, by the Ghanaian poet S. O. H. Afriyie-Vidza, treats praise, honour and communal celebration.
• The Breast of the Sea, by the Sierra Leonean poet Syl Cheney-Coker, uses the sea as an image of nourishment, loss and the history of the coast.
• The Stone, by Wilfred Wilson Gibson, is a narrative poem in which a young woman sits by while a stonecutter carves the gravestone of her lover, who was killed by a falling stone in the quarry. Devices: narrative frame, grim repetition and understatement.
• She Walks in Beauty, by Lord Byron, praises a woman whose outward beauty answers to an inward calm, opening with the comparison to the night. It is three six-line stanzas rhyming ababab. Devices: simile, antithesis of light and dark, and regular iambic tetrameter.
• The Nun's Priest's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer and set in a shortened form, is a beast fable from The Canterbury Tales in which the cock Chauntecleer is flattered into closing his eyes by the fox Russell and then escapes by flattering the fox in return. Themes: pride, flattery, the value of dreams, and mock-heroic comedy.
• Digging, by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, watches the poet's father and grandfather cutting turf and potatoes and ends with the poet resolving to dig with his pen instead. Devices: extended metaphor, onomatopoeia and precise physical detail.
• Still I Rise, by the American poet Maya Angelou, is a defiant address to an oppressor, insisting on survival and self-worth. Devices: refrain, rhetorical question, simile and anaphora.
• The Telephone Call, by the New Zealand born poet Fleur Adcock, is a dramatic monologue in dialogue form in which a caller tells the speaker she has won a vast prize, only for the call to turn out to be a cruel hoax by an outfit that sells the experience of winning. Themes: greed, deception, and the manipulation of hope.

Literary Terms and Essay Technique

The 20 general knowledge questions in Paper 1 are the easiest marks on the syllabus because they do not depend on having read the set texts. Learn the standard vocabulary and you bank them.

• Figures of speech to know: simile, metaphor, personification, apostrophe, hyperbole, litotes, irony, oxymoron, paradox, metonymy, synecdoche, euphemism and onomatopoeia.
• Sound devices: alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhyme, half rhyme, rhythm and refrain.
• Poetic forms and units: couplet, tercet, quatrain, sestet, octave, sonnet, ballad, ode, elegy, lyric, dramatic monologue, blank verse and free verse.
• Dramatic terms: tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, farce, soliloquy, aside, dramatic irony, foil, protagonist, antagonist, catharsis, hamartia, denouement and the three unities.
• Prose terms: plot, setting, point of view, first person and third person narration, omniscient narrator, flashback, foreshadowing, characterisation, flat and round character, and theme.
• Essay method: open with a direct answer to the question, not with a biography of the author; make one point per paragraph; support each point with a short accurate quotation or a precise reference; and close by returning to the terms of the question.
• Answer the question that is asked. A perfectly written account of a text that ignores the wording of the question loses most of the content marks.

Key Terms

Anansesem

The Akan storytelling tradition of tales about Ananse the spider, which Efua Sutherland adapted for the stage as anansegoro. The Marriage of Anansewa uses its storyteller, songs and audience address.

Dramatic irony

A situation in which the audience knows something a character on stage does not. It is central to An Inspector Calls, where the audience of 1945 knows the wars and disasters that Mr Birling in 1912 confidently denies will happen.

Beast fable

A short narrative in which animals speak and act as human types in order to teach a moral. The Nun's Priest's Tale is the standard example on this syllabus, with the cock Chauntecleer and the fox Russell.

Context question

An objective question in Paper 1 that quotes a short passage from the Shakespeare text and asks who is speaking, to whom, when, or what the passage means. Twenty of the fifty Paper 1 marks come from these.

Practice Quiz — 20 Questions

1. Which Shakespeare play is prescribed for WASSCE Literature in English from 2026 to 2030?

   • A.Othello
   • B.Macbeth
   • C.Antony and Cleopatra
   • D.Julius Caesar
   C. Antony and Cleopatra — Antony and Cleopatra is the Shakespearean text on the 2026 to 2030 list.

2. Who wrote So the Path Does Not Die?

   • A.Elma Shaw
   • B.Pede Hollist
   • C.Syl Cheney-Coker
   • D.Bosede Ademilua-Afolayan
   B. Pede Hollist — So the Path Does Not Die is by the Sierra Leonean novelist Pede Hollist and is set as African prose.

3. The protagonist of Redemption Road is:

   • A.Fina Marah
   • B.Bendu Lewis
   • C.Anansewa
   • D.Mayella Ewell
   B. Bendu Lewis — Bendu Lewis is the central figure in Elma Shaw's novel of post-war Liberia.

4. Which two plays make up the non-African drama on the 2026 to 2030 list?

   • A.An Inspector Calls and A Man for All Seasons
   • B.Once Upon an Elephant and The Marriage of Anansewa
   • C.A Man for All Seasons and Look Back in Anger
   • D.An Inspector Calls and Death of a Salesman
   A. An Inspector Calls and A Man for All Seasons — J. B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls and Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons are the prescribed non-African plays.

5. In The Marriage of Anansewa, Ananse promises his daughter in marriage to how many chiefs?

   • A.Two
   • B.Three
   • C.Four
   • D.Five
   C. Four — Ananse betroths Anansewa to four chiefs at once in order to collect gifts from all of them.

6. In A Man for All Seasons, Sir Thomas More is finally convicted on the perjured evidence of:

   • A.Thomas Cromwell
   • B.Richard Rich
   • C.The Duke of Norfolk
   • D.Cardinal Wolsey
   B. Richard Rich — Richard Rich swears falsely that More denied the King's supremacy, and is rewarded with the office of Attorney General for Wales.

7. The young woman whose death Inspector Goole investigates in An Inspector Calls is called:

   • A.Sheila Birling
   • B.Eva Smith
   • C.Sybil Birling
   • D.Edna
   B. Eva Smith — Eva Smith, who also used the name Daisy Renton, is the woman whose suicide links every member of the Birling family.

8. Who is the narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird?

   • A.Atticus Finch
   • B.Jem Finch
   • C.Scout Finch
   • D.Boo Radley
   C. Scout Finch — The novel is narrated by Jean Louise Finch, known as Scout, looking back on her childhood in Maycomb.

9. In Once Upon an Elephant, the kingmaker who bribes his colleagues to enthrone Ajanaku is:

   • A.Odekunle
   • B.Serubawon
   • C.Delani
   • D.Akinjobi
   B. Serubawon — Serubawon manipulates the other kingmakers so that Ajanaku takes the throne.

10. Which poem contains a father asking his son to teach him how to laugh sincerely again?

    • A.Night
    • B.Once Upon a Time
    • C.Not My Business
    • D.The Breast of the Sea
    B. Once Upon a Time — Gabriel Okara's Once Upon a Time contrasts honest greetings of the past with the practised faces of the present.

11. Niyi Osundare's Not My Business is built around which technique?

    • A.A repeated refrain of indifference that is finally turned on the speaker
    • B.An extended sea metaphor
    • C.A sonnet form in iambic pentameter
    • D.A beast fable with talking animals
    A. A repeated refrain of indifference that is finally turned on the speaker — Each stanza ends with the speaker insisting the abduction of a neighbour is not his business, until the soldiers arrive for him.

12. She Walks in Beauty was written by:

    • A.Seamus Heaney
    • B.Lord Byron
    • C.Wilfred Wilson Gibson
    • D.Fleur Adcock
    B. Lord Byron — It is Byron's lyric, opening with the comparison of the woman to the night of cloudless climes and starry skies.

13. In Seamus Heaney's Digging, what does the poet decide to dig with?

    • A.A spade
    • B.A pen
    • C.A turf cutter
    • D.His hands
    B. A pen — The poem ends with the squat pen resting in his hand, which he will dig with instead of following his father and grandfather into the ground.

14. In The Nun's Priest's Tale, Chauntecleer escapes the fox by:

    • A.Flying into a tree before he is caught
    • B.Flattering the fox into opening his mouth to speak
    • C.Being rescued by the widow's dogs
    • D.Pretending to be dead
    B. Flattering the fox into opening his mouth to speak — Chauntecleer, who was himself caught by flattery, persuades the fox to boast at the pursuers, and escapes when the fox opens his jaws.

15. The Telephone Call by Fleur Adcock turns on:

    • A.A genuine lottery win
    • B.A hoax call selling the experience of winning
    • C.A wrong number from a hospital
    • D.A call announcing a death
    B. A hoax call selling the experience of winning — The callers admit that they do not pay out money, only the sensation of winning, which makes the poem a study of manipulated hope.

16. Wilfred Wilson Gibson's The Stone concerns:

    • A.A quarry worker killed by a falling stone and the carving of his gravestone
    • B.A stone thrown in a village quarrel
    • C.A monument to soldiers
    • D.A miner trapped underground
    A. A quarry worker killed by a falling stone and the carving of his gravestone — The poem watches the dead man's young woman sit silently while his headstone is cut.

17. How long is Paper 1 and how many marks does it carry?

    • A.One hour, 50 marks
    • B.One hour fifteen minutes, 50 marks
    • C.Two hours, 100 marks
    • D.Two hours thirty minutes, 100 marks
    A. One hour, 50 marks — Paper 1 is the one hour objective paper carrying 50 marks, including 20 Shakespeare context questions.

18. In which paper are the prose texts examined?

    • A.Paper 1
    • B.Paper 2
    • C.Paper 3
    • D.Papers 1 and 3
    B. Paper 2 — Paper 2 has an African prose section and a non-African prose section, one essay to be written in each.

19. How many essays must a candidate write in Paper 3?

    • A.Two
    • B.Three
    • C.Four
    • D.Eight
    C. Four — Paper 3 has four sections, African drama, non-African drama, African poetry and non-African poetry, and one question is answered in each.

20. A speech in which a character alone on stage speaks their thoughts aloud is called:

    • A.An aside
    • B.A soliloquy
    • C.A monologue in dialogue
    • D.A prologue
    B. A soliloquy — A soliloquy is delivered by a character alone on stage. An aside is a brief remark to the audience while others are present.

References

• WAEC Literature in English syllabus and prescribed texts 2026 to 2030 — https://waec2026.blog/waec-literature-in-english-syllabus-2026-2027-textbooks/
• Tammy's English Blog, Literature texts for 2026 to 2030 WASSCE — https://www.tammysenglishblog.com/2025/01/literature-texts-for-2026-2030-wassce.html
• Literature PADI, 2026 to 2030 recommended literature texts for WAEC and NECO SSCE — https://www.literaturepadi.com.ng/2023/06/28/2026-2030-recommended-literature-texts-for-waec-and-neco-ssce/
• Literature PADI, Plot summary of Elma Shaw's Redemption Road — https://www.literaturepadi.com.ng/2024/04/30/plot-summary-of-elma-shaws-redemption-road/
• Literature PADI, Plot summary of Bosede Ademilua-Afolayan's Once Upon an Elephant — https://www.literaturepadi.com.ng/2025/01/03/plot-summary-of-bosede-ademilua-afolayans-once-upon-an-elephant/