Hellmuth Karasek (4 January 1934 – 29 September 2015) was a German journalist, literary critic, novelist, and the author of many books on literature and film.

[2] Karasek was born in the capital city of Moravia, Brno (German: Brünn), which was then a part of Czechoslovakia (current-day Czech Republic).

[4] After finishing his schooling in the early 1950s he moved from there—then part of East Germany—to West Germany and became a student at the University of Tübingen, where he studied History, German and English language and literature.

He also wrote more than 20 books about his own life or literature and film, including monographs about Max Frisch, Bertolt Brecht and his close friend Billy Wilder.

[7] Karasek was best known as one of the permanent members of the TV-literature review show Das Literarische Quartett [de], together with literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki, between 1988 and 2001.