crucible

"Bali is a crucible in a lot of ways of overtourism," she says.

Some believe the territory's complex citizenship laws have inadvertently created a crucible of disenfranchised Haitian youngsters.

It is the crucible of Oregon’s energy growth, the single piece of infrastructure that utilities and renewable advocates are most eager to see built.

Pendine was the crucible of land speed records in the 1920s, with enough space for cars to accelerate to - and more importantly brake from - speeds which had become impossible to achieve on racetracks like Brooklands.

Both are concerned with childhood traumas, and if Shteyngart isn’t explicitly borrowing their plots he borrows some of their gravitas, the sense that preteendom is a crucible for experiencing life’s various crises.