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Madhya-līlā  (the middle period), the longest of the three, is a detailed narration of Śrī Caitanya's extensive and eventful travels throughout India as a renounced mendicant, teacher, philosopher, spiritual preceptor and mystic. Finally,  Antya-līlā  (the final period) concerns the last eighteen years of Caitanya Mahāprabhu's manifest presence, spent in semiseclusion in Jagannātha Purī, Orissa. During these final years, Śrī Caitanya drifted deeper and deeper into trances of spiritual ecstasy unparalleled in all of religious and literary history. Eastern or Western.
Krṣṇadāsa Kavirāja Gosvāmī, the author of  Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta , was a great saint and a confidential disciple and student of Raghunātha dāsa Gosvāmī, the renowned ascetic saint who was one of the most intimate disciples of Śrī Caitanya. He commenced work on the text while in his late nineties and in failing health, as he vividly describes in the text itself: "I have now become too old and disturbed in invalidity. While writing, my hands tremble. I cannot remember anything, nor can I see or hear properly. Still I write, and this is a great wonder." That he nevertheless completed, under such debilitating conditions, the greatest literary gem of medieval India is surely one of the wonders of literary history.
The English translation and commentary is the work of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, the world's most distinguished scholar and teacher of Indian religious and philosophical thought. He himself is a disciplic descendant of Śrī Caitanya, and his intimate familiarity with the precepts of Caitanya Mahāprabhu eminently qualifies him to present this important classic to the English-speaking world. The ease and clarity with which he expounds upon Śrī Caitanya's precepts lures even a reader totally unfamiliar with Indian religious tradition into a genuine understanding and appreciation of this profound and monumental work.
The entire text, with commentary, presented in seventeen lavishly illustrated volumes by the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, represents a contribution of major importance to the intellectual, cultural and spiritual life of contemporary man.